
Glass JJ G 2, 6 






COMMITTEE ON ALLE(?ED GERMAN OUTRAGES. ^**^ 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE 



ON 



ALLEGED GERMAN OUTRAGES 



APPOIlsTED BY 



HIS BEITAMIC MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT 



AND PRESIDED OVER BY 



The Right Hon. VISCOUNT BUYCE, O.M., &c., &c. 

Formerly British Ambassador at PVashington, 




PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN AND COMPANY, NEW YORK, 

pQjj PWNTED IN EKQMND 

HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE, LONDON. 



Gt /?wf. / 



COMMITTEE ON ALLEGED GERMAN OUTRAGES. 



^10 



REPORT OP THE COMMITTEE 



ON 



ALLEGED GERMAN OUTRAGES 



APPOINTED BY 



HIS BRITAMIC MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT 



AND PRESIDED OVER BY 



The Right Hon. VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M., &c., &c. 

Formerly British Ambassador at Wasldnyton. 



PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN AND COMPANY, NEW YOEE. 



TABLE OP CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Waerant of Appointment - - 2 

Inteodtictory Observations 3 

Part 1.— CONDUCT OF GERMAN TROOPS IN BELGIUM 9 

Liege and District 10 

VAIiLEYS OF THE MEUSE AND SaMBRE - - - - - 14 

The Aerschot, Malinbs, Vilvorde and Louvain Quad- 
rangle 20 

LouvAiN - 29 

Termonde - 36 

Alost - - 37 

Part II.— BREACHES OF RULES AND USAGES OF WAR 
AND ACTS OF INHUMANITY IN INVADED 

TERRITORIES - - 45 

1. Treatment of the Civil Population - - - - 45 

(a) Killing of Non-Combatants 45 

(6) Treatment of Women and Children - - - 47 

(c) The Use of Civilians as Screens - - - - 53 

((Z) The Looting, Burning, and Destruction of Pro- 
perty - - - - 54 

2. Offences against Combatants 56 

(a) Killing the Wounded or Prisoners - - - 56 

(6) Firing on Hospitals 58 

(c) Abuse of Red Cross and White Flag - - - 59 

CONCLUSIONS 60 



o (33)28300 21,000 4/15 E & S A 2 



WARRANT OF APPOINTMENT. 



I hereby appoint — 

The Right Hon. Viscount BRYCE, O.M. ; 

The Right Hon. Sir FREDERICK POLLOCK, Bt., 
K.C. ; 

The Right Hon. Sir EDWARD CLARKE, K.C. ; 

Sir ALFRED HOPKINSON, K.C. ; 

Mr. H. a. L. FISHER, Vice-Chancellor of the University 
of Sheffield ; and 

Mr. HAROLD COX; 

to be a Committee to consider and advise on the evidence 
collected on behalf of His Majesty's Government as to outrages 
alleged to have been committed by German troops during the 
present War, cases of alleged maltreatment of civilians in the 
invaded territories, and breaches of the laws and established 
usages of war; and to prepare a report for His Majesty's 
Government showing the conclusion at which they arrive on 
the evidence now available. 

And I appoint Viscount Bryce to be Chairman, and 
]\Ir. E. Grimwood Meara and Mr. W. J, H. Brodrick, barristers- 
at-law, to be Joint Secretaries to the Committee. 

(Signed) H. H. ASQUITH. 
loth December 1914. 

Sir KENELM E. DIGBY, K.C, G.C.B., was appointed an 
additional member of the Committee on 22nd January 1915. 



NOV 18 1919 



To the Right Honourable H. H. AsQurni, &c., &c., First 
Lord of H.M. Treasury. 

The Committee have the honour to present and transmit to 
you a report upon the evidence which has been submitted to 
them regarding outrages alleged to have been committed by 
the German troops in the present war. 

By the terms of their appointment the Committee were 
directed " to consider and advise on the evidence collected on 
" behalf of His Majesty's Government, as to outrages alleged to 
" have been committed by German troops during the present 
" war, cases of alleged maltreatment of civilians in the invaded 
" territories, and breaches of the laws and established usages of 
*' war ; and to prepare a report for His Majesty's Government 
" showing the conclusion at which they arrive on the evidence 
" now available." 

It may be convenient that before proceeding to state how we 
have dealt with the materials, and what are the conclusions we 
have reached, we should set out the manner in which the 
evidence came into being, and its nature. 

In the month of September 1914 a Minute was, at the 
instance of the Prime Minister, drawn up and signed by the 
Home Secretary and the Attorney-General. It stated the need 
that had arisen for investigating the accusations of inhumanity 
and outrage that had been brought against the German soldiers, 
and indicated the precautions to be taken in collecting evidence 
that would be needed to ensure its accuracy. Pursuant to this 
Minute steps were taken under the direction of the Home Office 
to collect evidence, and a great manj^ persons who could give it 
were seen and examined. 

For some three or four months before the appointment of 
the Committee, the Home Office had been collecting a large 
body of evidence.''" More than 1,200 depositions made by these 
witnesses have been submitted to and considered by the Com- 
mittee. Nearly all of these were obtained under the supervision 
of Sir Charles Mathews, the Director of Public Prosecutions, 
and of Mr. E. Grimwood Mears, barrister of the Inner Temple, 
whilst in addition Professor J. H. Morgan has collected a 
number of statements mainly from British soldiers, which have 
also been submitted to the Committee. 

The labour involved in securing, in a comparatively short 
time, so large a number of statements from Avitnesses scattered 
all oA^er the United Kingdom, made it necessary to employ 
a good many examiners. The depositions were in all cases 
taken down in this country by gentlemen of legal knowledge 
and experience, though, of course, they had no authority to 

* Taken from Belgian witnesses, some soldiers, but most of them 
civilians from those towns and villages through which the German Army 
passed, and from British officers and soldiei-s. 



administer an oath. They were instructed not to "lead" the 
witnesses, or make any suggestions to them, and also to impress 
upon them the necessity for care and precision in giving their 
evidence. 

They were also directed to treat the evidence critically, and 
as far as possible satisfy themselves, by putting questions which 
arose out of the evidence, that the witnesses Avere speaking the 
truth. They were, in fact, to cross-examine them, so far as the 
testimony given provided materials for cross-examination. 

We have seen and conversed with many of these gentlemen, 
and have been greatly impressed by their ability and by what 
we have gathered as to the fairness of spirit which they brought 
to their task. We feel certain that the instructions given have 
been scrupulously observed. 

In many cases those who took the evidence have added their 
comments upon the intelligence and demeanour of the witnesses, 
stating the impression which each witness made, and indicating 
any cases in which the story told appeared to them open to 
doubt or suspicion. In coming to a conclusion upon the 
evidence the Committee have been greatly assisted by these 
expressions of opinion, and have uniformly rejected every 
deposition on which an opinion adverse to the witness has been 
recorded. 

This seems to be a fitting place at which to put on record 
the invaluable help which we have received from our Secretaries, 
Mr, E. Grimwood Mears and Mr. W. J. H. Brodrick, whose 
careful diligence and minute knowledge of the evidence have 
been of the utmost service. Without their skill, judgment, and 
untiring industry the labour of examining and appraising each 
part of so large a mass of testimony would have occupied us for 
six months instead of three. 

The marginal references in this Report indicate the parti- 
cular deposition or depositions on which the statements made 
in the text are based. 

The depositions printed in the Appendix themselves show 
that the stories were tested in detail, and in none of these have 
we been able to detect the trace of any desire to "make a 
case " against the German army. Care was taken to impress 
■upon the witness that the giving of evidence was a grave and 
serious matter, and every deposition submitted to us was signed 
by the witness in the presence of the examiner. 

A noteworthy feature of many of the depositions is that 
though taken at different places and on different dates, and by 
different lawyers from different witnesses, they often corroborate 
each other in a striking manner. 

The evidence is all couched in the very words which the 
witnesses used, and where they spoke, as the Belgian witnesses 
did, in Flemish or French, pains were taken to have com- 
petent translators, and to make certain that the translation was 
exact. 



Seldom did these Belgian witnesses show a desire to 
describe what they had seen or suffered. The lawyers who 
took the depositions were surprised to find how little vindic- 
tiveness, or indeed passion, they showed, and how generally 
free from emotional excitement their narratives were. Many 
hesitated to speak lest what they said, if it should ever be pub- 
lished, might involve their friends or relatives at home in 
danger, and it was found necessary to give an absolute promise 
that names should not be disclosed. 

For this reason names have been omitted. 

A large number of depositions, and extracts from deposi- 
tions, will be found in Appendix A., and to these your attention 
is directed. 

In all cases these are given as nearly as possible (for abbre- 
viation was sometimes inevitable) in the exact words of the 
witness, and wherever a statement has been made by a witness 
tending to exculpate the German troops, it has been given in 
full. Excisions have been made only where it has been felt 
necessary to conceal the identity of the deponent, or to omit 
what are merely hearsay statements, or are palpably irrelevant. 
In every case the name and description of the witnesses are 
given in the original depositions and in copies which have been 
furnished to us by H.M. Government. The originals remain in 
the custody of the Home Department, where they will be avail- 
able, in case of need, for reference after the conclusion of the 
War. 

The Committee have also had before them a number of 
diaries taken from the German dead. 

It appears to be the custom in the German army for soldiers 
to be encouraged to keep diaries and to record in them the chief 
events of each day. A good many of these diaries were collected 
on the field when British troops were advancing over ground 
which had been held by the enemy, were sent to Head Quarters 
in France, and despatched thence to the War Office in England. 
They passed into the possession of the Prisoners of War Infor- 
mation Bureau, and were handed by it to our secretaries. 
They have been translated with great care. We have inspected 
them and are absolutely satisfied of their authenticity. They 
have thrown important light upon the methods followed in the 
conduct of the war. In one respect, indeed, they are the most 
weighty part of the evidence, because they proceed from a hostile 
source and are not open to any such criticism on the ground of 
bias as might be applied to Belgian testimony. From time tc 
time references to these diaries will be found in the text of the 
Report. In Appendix B. they are set out at greater length both 
in the German original and in an English translation, together 
with a few photographs of the more important entries. 

In Appendix C. are set out a number of German proclama- 
tions. Most of these are included in the Belgian Report No. VI. 
which has been furnished to us. Actual specimens of original 



6 

proclamations, issued by or at tlie bidding of the German 
militarj^ authorities, and posted in the Belgian and Frencli 
towns mentioned, have been produced to us, and copies thereof 
are to be found in this Appendix. 

Appendix D. contains the rules of the Hague Convention 
dealing with the conduct of War on Land as adopted in 1907, 
Germany being one of the signatory powers. 

In Appendix E. will be found a selection of statements 
collected in France by Professor Morgan. 

These five appendices are contained in a separate volume. 

In dealing with the evidence we have recognised the 
importance of testing it severely, and so far as the conditions 
I)ermit we have followed the principles which are recognised in 
the Courts of England, the British Overseas Dominions, and the 
United States. We have also (as already noted) set aside the 
testimony of any witnesses who did not iavourably impress the 
la-wyers wdio took their depositions, and have rejected hearsay 
evidence except in cases where hearsay furnished an undesigned 
confirmation of facts with regard to wdiich we already possessed 
direct testimony from some other source^ or explained in a 
natural Avay facts imperfectly narrated or otherwise perplexing.* 

It is natural to ask w^hether much of the evidence given, 
especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to 
excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from 
deliberate falsehood,, persons who mean to speak the truth may 
not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining 
themselves to have seen the things which they say that they 
saw. Botli the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when 
we came to examine them, fully recognised this possibility. 
The lawyers, as already observed, took pains to test each 
Avitness and either rejected, or apj^ended a note of distrust to, 
the testimony of those who failed to impress them favourably. 
We have carried the sifting still further by also omitting from 
the depositions those in which w^e found sometliing that seemed 
too exceptional to be accepted on the faith of one witness only, 
or too little supported by other evidence pointing to like facts. 
Many depositions have thus been omitted on Avhich, though they 
are probably true, we think it safer not to place reliance. 

Notwithstanding these precautions, we began the inqiury 
with doubts whether a positive result would be attained. But 
the further Ave Avent and the more evidence Ave examined so 

* For instance, the dead body of a man is found lying on the doorstep, 
or a woman is seen who has the appearance of having been outraged. So 
far the facts are proved by the direct evidence of the person by whom they 
have been seen. Information is sought for by him as to the circumstances 
under which the death or outi-age took place. The bystanders who saw the 
circumstances, but who are not now accessible, relate what they saw, and 
this is reported by the witness to the examiner and is placed on record in 
the depositions. We have had no hesitation in taking such evidence into 
consideration. 



mucli tlie more was our scepticism reduced. There might be 
some exaggeration in one witness, possible delusion in another, 
inaccuracies in a third. When, however, we found that things 
Avhich had at first seemed improbable were testified to by many 
witnesses coming from different places, having had no com- 
munication with one another, and knowing nothing of one 
another's statements, the points in which they all agreed 
became more and more evidently true. And when this con- 
currence of testimony, this convergence upon what were 
substantially the same broad facts, showed itself in hundreds 
of depositions, the truth of those broad facts stood out beyond 
question. The force of the evidence is cumulative. Its Avorth 
can be estimated only by perusing the testimony as a whole. 
If any further confirmation had been needed, we ^ound it in 
the diaries in which German officers and private soldiers have 
recorded incidents just such as those to which the Belgian 
Avitnesses depose. 

The experienced lawyers who took the depositions tell us 
that they passed from the same stage of doubt into the same 
stage of conviction. They also began their work in a sceptical 
spirit, expecting to find much of the evidence coloured by 
passion, or prompted by an excited fancy. But they Avere 
impressed by the general moderation and matter of fact level- 
headedness of the Avitnesses. We have interrogated them, 
particularly regarding some of the most startling and shocking- 
incidents AA'hich appear in the evidence laid before us, and 
Avhere they expressed , a doubt AA^e haA^e excluded the evidence, 
admitting it as regards the cases in Avhich thej^ stated that the 
Avitnesses seemed to them to be speaking the truth, and that 
they themselves believed the incidents referred to have 
happened . It is for this reason that we have inserted among 
the depositions x)rinted in the Appendix several cases AA'hich we 
might otherwise have deemed scarcely credible. 

The Committee has conducted its investigations and come 
to its conclusions independently of the reports issued by the 
French and Belgian Commissions, but it has no reason to doubt 
that those conclusions are in substantial accord AAdth the 
conclusions that have been reached by these two Commissions. 

Arrangement of the Report. 

As respects the framework and arrangement of the Report, 
it has been deemed desirable to present first of all Avhat may be 
called a general historical account of the events Avhich happened, 
and the conditions Avhich prevailed in the parts of Belgium 
AA'hich lay along the line of the German march, and thereafter to 
set forth the evidence Avhicli bears upon particular classes of 
offences against the usages of civilised Avarfare, evidence which 
shows to what extent the provisions of the Hague Convention 
have been disregarded. 



8 



/ 



This method, no doubt, involves a certain amount of over- 
lapping, for some of the offences belonging to the later part of 
the Report will have been already referred to in the earlier part 
which deals with the invasion of Belgium. But the importance 
of presenting a connected narrative of events seems to outweigh 
the disadvantage of occasional repetition. 

The Report will therefore be found to consist of two parts, 
viz. : — • 

(1) An analysis and summary of the evidence regarding the 

conduct of the German troops in Belgiiun towards 
the civilian population of that country during the 
first few weeks of the invasion. 

(2) An examination of the evidence relating to breaches of 

the rules and usages of war and acts of inhumanity, 
committed by German soldiers or groups of soldiers, 
during the first four months of the war, whether in 
Belgium or in France. 
This second part has again been sub-divided into two 
sections : — 

a. Offences committed against non-combatant civilians 

during the conduct of the war generally. 

b. Offences committed against combatants, whether in 

Belgium or in France. 




Zele 




PART I. 

THE CONDUCT OF THE GERMAN TROOPS IN 
BELGIUM/ 

Although the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by 
a treaty signed in 1839 to which France, Prussia, and Great 
Britain were parties, and although, apart altogether from any 
duties imposed by treaty, no belligerent nation has any right 
to claim a passage for its army across the territory of a neutral 
state, the position which Belgium held between the German 
Empire and France had obliged her to consider the possibility 
that in the event of a war between these two Powers her 
neutrality might not be respected. In 1911 the Belgian 
Minister at Berlin had requested an assurance from Germany 
that she would observe the Treaty of 1839 ; and the Chancellor 
of the Empire had declared that Germany had no intention of 
violating Belgian neutrality. Again in 1913 the German 
Secretary of State at a meeting of a Budget Committee of 
the Reichstag had declared that " Belgian neutrality is pro- 
" vided for by international conventions and Germany is 
" determined to respect those conventions." Finally, on July 
31, 1914, when the danger of war between Germany and France 
seemed imminent, Herr von Below, the German Minister in 
Brussels, being interrogated by the Belgian Foreign Depart- 
ment, replied that he knew of the assurances given by the 
German Chancellor in 1911, and that he " was certain that the 
sentiments expressed at that time had not changed." Neverthe- 
less on August 2 the same Minister presented a note to the Belgian 
Government demanding a passage through Belgium for the 
German army on pain of an instant declaration of war. Startled 
as they were by the suddenness with which this terrific war 
cloud had risen on the eastern horizon, the leaders of the 
nation rallied round the King in his resolution to refuse the 
demand and to prepare for resistance. They were aware of the 
danger which would confront the civilian population of the 
country if it were tempted to take part in the work of national 
defence. Orders were accordingly issued by the civil governors 
of provinces, and by the burgomasters of towns, that the 
civilian inhalDitants were to take no part in hostilities and to 
offer no provocation to the invaders. That no excuse might be 
furnished for severities, the populations of many important 
towns were instructed to surrender all firearms into the hands 
of the local officials.^ 

^ A general map of Belgium wiU be found facing this page. 
- Copies of typical proclamations have been printed in L' Allemagne et la 
Belgique, Documents Annexes, xxxvi. 



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GEOHGE PHILIP & SON, Ltrl 



10 



This happened on August 2. On the evening of August o 
the German troops crossed the frontier. The storm burst so 
suddenly that neither party had time to adjust its jnind to 
the situation. The Germans seem to have expected an easy 
passage. The Belgian population, never dreaming of an attack, 
were startled and stupefied. 



LIEGE AND DISTRICT. 

On August 4th the roads converging upon Liege from north- 
east, east, and south were covered with Clerman Death's Head 
Hussars and Uhlans pressing forward to seize the passage over 
the Meuse, From the very beginning of the operations the 
civilian population of the villages lying upon the line of the 
German advance were, made to experience the extreme horrors 

a 2.1 of war. " On the 4th of August," says one witness, " at Herve " 

(a village not far from the frontier), " I saw at about 2 o'clock 
" in the afternoon, near the station, five Uhlans ; these were 
" the first German troops I had seen. They were followed by 
" a German officer and some soldiers in a motor car. The men 
" in the car called out to a couple of young fellows who were 
" standing about 30 yards away. The young men, being 
" afraid, ran off and then the Germans fired and killed one of 

" them named D " The murder of this innocent 

fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and pillage of 
Herve and of other villages in the neighbourhood, to the 
indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes, and to the 
organised military execution of batches of selected males. Thus 
at Herve some 50 men escaping from the burning houses were 
seized, taken outside the town and shot. At Melen, a hamlet 
west of Herve, 40 men were shot. In one household alone the 
father and mother (names given) were shot, the daughter died 
after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. 
Nor were children exempt. " About August 4," says one 

* ^- witness, '' near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw 

" a man, woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. 
" They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the 
" other, as if they had been shot down, one after the other, as 
" they tried to escape." 

The burning of the villages in this neighbourhood and the 
wholesale slaughter of civilians, such as occurred at Herve, 
Micheroux, and Soumagne, appear to be connected Avith the 
exasperation caused by the resistance of Fort Fleron, whose 
guns barred the main road from Aix la Chapelle to Liege. 



1 The references are to the Appendices to be found in Yol. II. of the 
Report. Those to which a letter is prefixed, as in the present case, relate 
to the Appendix of Depositions (A) which is subdivided into sections, each 
of which is so distinguished. 



11 

Enraged by the losses wliicli they had sustained, suspicious of 

the temper of the civilian population, and probably tliinkiiig 

that by exceptional severities at the outset they could cow the 

spirit of the Belgian nation, the German officers and men 

speedily accustomed themselves to the slaughter of civilians. 

How rapidly the process was effected is illustrated by an entry 

in the diary of Kurt Hoffman, a one j^ear's man in the 1st Jiigers, 

who on August 5th was in front of Fort Fleron. He illustrates Appendix B. 

his story by a sketch map. "The position," he says, "was 

" dangerous. As suspicious civilians were hanging about — 

" houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, were cleared, the owners arrested (and 

" shot the following day). Suddenly village A was fired at. 

" Out of it bursts our baggage train, and the 4th Company of 

'* the 27th Regiment who had lost their way and been shelled 

" hj our own artillerj^ From the point D.P. (shown in diary) 

" I shoot a civilian with rifle at 400 metres slap through the 

" head, as we afterwards ascertained." Within a few hours, 

Hoffman, whilst in house 3, was himself under fire from his own 

comrades and narrowly escaped being killed. A German, 

ignorant that house 3 had been occupied, reported, as was the 

fact, that he had been fired upon from that house. He had j 

been challenged by the field patrol, and failed to give the 

countersign. Hoffman continues : " Ten minutes later, people 

approach who are talking excitedly — -apparently Germans. I 

call out ' Halt, who's there ? ' Suddenly rapid fire is opened 

upon us, which I can only escape by quickly jumping on one 

side — with bullets and fragments of wall and pieces of glass 

" flying round me, I call out ' Halt, here Field Patrol.' Then 

it stops, and there appears Lieutenant Romer with three 

platoons. A man has reported that he had been shot at out 

" of our house; no wonder, if he does not give the countersign." 

The entry, though dated jiugust the 5th, was evidently written 

on the 6th or later, because the writer refers to the suspicious 

civilians as having been shot on that day. Hoffman does not 

i ndicate of what offence these civilians were guilty, and there is 

no positive evidence to connect their slaughter with the report 

made by the German who had been fired on by his comrades. 

They were " suspicious " and that was enough. 

The systematic execution of civilians, which in some cases, 
as the diary just cited shows, was founded on a genuine mistake, 
was given a wide extension through the province of Liege. In a 4. 

Soumagne and Micheroux A^ery many civilians were summarily 
shot. In a field belonging to a man named E . . . . 56 or 57 
were put to death. A German officer said: "You have shot at a 9. 
us." One of the villagers asked to be allowed to speak, and 
said : " If you think these people fired, kill me, but let them go." 
The answer was three volleys. The survivors were bayoneted. a 5. 

Their corpses were seen in the field that night by another 
witness. One at least had been mutilated. These were not the 
only victims in Soumagne. The eye-witness of the massacre 



12 



a 9. 



a 1' 



a 16. 



a 20. 



a 21. 



Appendix B. 



Van der 
Schoot. 

a 24. 



a 26. 



a 28. 



■2. 34, a 26, 

a 28. 



saw, on liis way home, 20 bodies, one that of a young girl of 13. 
Another witness saw 19 corpses in a meadow. 

At Blegny Trembleur, on the 6th, some civilians were 
captured by German soldiers, who took steps to put them to 
death forthwith, but were restrained by the arrival of an officer. 
The prisoners subsequently were taken off to Battice and five 
were shot in a field. No reason was assigned for their murder. 

In the meantime house burners were at work. On the 6th, 
Battice was destroyed in part. From the 8th to the 10th over 
300 houses were burnt at Herve, while mounted men shot into 
doors and windows to prevent the escape of the inhabitants. 

At Heure le Romain on or about the 15th of August all the 
male inhabitants, including some bedridden old men were 
imprisoned in the church. The burgomaster's brother and 
the priest were bayoneted. 

On or about the 14th and 15th the village of Vise was 
completely destroyed. Officers directed the incendiaries, who 
worked methodically with benzine. Antiques and china were 
removed from the houses, before their destruction, by officers, 
who guarded the plunder revolver in hand. The house of a 
witness, which contained valuables of this kind, was protected for 
a time by a notice posted on the door by officers. This notice 
has been produced to the Committee. After the removal of the 
valuables this house also was burnt. 

German soldiers had arrived on the 15th at Blegny Trem- 
bleur and seized a quantity of wine. On the 16th prisoners 
were taken ; four, including the priest and the burgomaster, ^vere 
shot. On the same day 200 (so-called) hostages were seized at 
Flemalle and marched off. There they were told that unless 
Fort Flemalle surrendered by noon they would be shot. It did 
surrender and they were released. 

Entries in a German diary show tliat on the 19tli the German 
soldiers gave tliemselves up to debauchery in the streets of 
Liege, and on the night of the 20th (Thursday) a massacre took 
place in the streets, beginning near the Cafe Carpentier, at 
which there is said to have been a dinner attended by Russian 
and other students. A proclamation issued by General Kolewe 
on the following day gave the German version of the affair, 
which was that his troops had been fired on by Russian students. 
The diary states that in the night the inhabitants of Li^ge 
became mutinous and that 50 persons were shot. The Belgian 
witnesses vehemently deny that there had been any provocation 
given, some stating that many German soldiers were drunk, 
others giving evidence which indicates that the affair was 
planned beforehand. It is stated that at 5 o'clock in the 
evening, long before the shooting, a citizen was warned by a 
friendly German soldier not to go out that night. 

Though the cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results 
are known with certainty. The Rue des Pitteurs and houses in 
the Place de I'Universite and the Quai des Pecheurs were 



13 



systematically fired with benzine, and many inhabitants were 
burnt alive in their houses, their efforts to escape being pre- 
vented by rifle fire. Twenty people were shot, while trying to 
escape, before the eyes of one of the witnesses. The Liege Fire a 28 to a 31. 
Brigade turned out but was not allowed to extinguish the fire. 
Its carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps 
of civilian corpses to the Town Hall. The fire burnt on through 
the night and the murders continued on the following day, the 
21st. Thirty-two civilians were killed on that day in the Place 
de rUniversite alone, and a witness states that ^his was followed 
by the rape in open day of 15 or 20 women on tables in the 
square itself. 

No depositions are before us which deal with events in the 
city of Liege after this date. Outrages, however, continued in 
various places in the province. 

For example, on or about the 21st of August, at Pepinster, a 33, a 34. 
two witnesses were seized as hostages and were threatened, 
together with five others, that unless they could discover a 
civilian who was alleged to have shot a soldier in the leg, they 
would be shot themselves. They escaped their fate because 
one of the hostages convinced the officer that the alleged 
shooting, if it took place at all, took place in the Commune of 
Cornesse and not that of Pepinster, whereupon the Burgomaster 
of Cornesse, who was old and very deaf, was shot forthwith. 

The outrages on the civilian population were not confined 
to the villages mentioned above, but appear to ha^e been 
general throughout this district from the very outbreak of 
the war. 

An entry in one of the diaries says: "We crossed the Appendix B. 
" Belgian frontier on 15th August 1914 at 11.50 in the forenoon, 
" and then we went steadily along the main road till we got into 
Belgium. Hardly were we there when we had a horrible 
'■ sight. Houses were burnt down, the inhabitants chased 
" away and some of them shot. Not one of the hundreds of 
" houses were spared. Everything was plundered and burnt. 
Hardly had we passed through this large village before the 
" next village was burnt, and so it went on continuously. On 
the 16th August 1914 the large village of Barchon was burnt 
*' down. On the same day we crossed the bridge over the 
" Meuse at 11.50 in the morning. We then arrived at the 
town of Wandre. Here the houses were spared, but every- 
thing was examined. At last we were out of the town and 
everything went in ruins. In one house a whole collection 
*' of weapons was found. The inhabitants without exception 
were brought out and shot. This shooting was heart- 
" breaking as they all knelt down and prayed, but that was no 
ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back 
into the green grass and slept for ever." [" Die Einwohner 
wurden samt und senders herausgeholt und erschossen : aber 
dieses Erschiessen war direkt herzzerreisend wie sie alle 



Eitel 
Anders. 



14 

kniebeii iind beteten, aber dies half kein Erbarmen. Ein 
paar Schiisse krackten iind die fielon riicklings in das griiiie 
Gras und verschliefen fiir immer."] 



VALLEYS OF MEUSE AND SAMBRE. 

While the First i\.rmy, under the command of General 
Alexander von Kluck, was mastering the passages of the Meuse 
between Vise and Namur, and carrying out the scheme of 
devastation which has already been described, detachments of 
the Second German Army, under General von Billow, were 
proceeding up the Meuse valley towards Namur. On Wednes- 
day, August the 1 2th, the town of Huy, which stands halfway 
between Namur and Liege, was seized. On August 20 German 
guns opened fire on Namur itself. Three days later the city 
was evacuated by its defenders, and the Germans proceeded 
along the valley of. the Sambre through Tamines and Charleroi 
to Mons. Meanwhile a force under General A^on Hansen had 
advanced upon Dinant, by Laroche, Marche, and Achene, and 
on August loth made an unsuccessful assault upon that town. 
A few days later the attack was renewed and with success, and, 
Dinant captured, Von Hansen's army streamed into France by 
Bouvines and Rethel, firing and looting the villages and shooting 
the inhabitants as they passed through. 

The evidence with regard to the Province of Namur is les? 
voluminous than that relating to the north of Belgium. This is 
largely due to the fact that the testimony of soldiers is seldom 
available, as the towns and villages once occupied by the 
Gfermans were seldom reoccupied by the opposing troops, and 
the number of refugees who have reached England from the 
Namur district is comparatively small. 

Andennb. 

Andenne is a small town on the Meuse between Liege and 
Namur, lying opposite the village of Seilles (with which it is 
connected by a bridge over the river), and was one of the earlier 
1j 2. places reached on the German advance up the Meuse. In order 
to understand the story of the massacre which occurred there 
on Thursday, August 20th, the following facts should be borne 
in mind : The German advance was hotly contested by Belgian 
and French troops. From daybreak onwards on the 19th August 
the 8th Belgian Regiment of the Line were fighting with the 
German troops on the left bank of the Meuse on the heights of 
Seilles. At 8 a.m. on the 19th the Belgians found further 
resistance impossible in the district, and retired under shelter 
of the forts of Namur. As they retired they blew up 
Andenne bridge. The first Germans a^^^ived in Andenne at 



15 

about 10 a.m., when 10 or 12 Uhlans rode into the town. They 
went to the bridge and found it was destroyed. They then 
retired, but returned about half an hour afterwards. Soon after 
that several thousand Germans entered the town and made 
arrangements to spend the night there. Thus, on the evening 
of the 19th August a large body of German troops were in 
possession of the town, which they had entered without any 
resistance on the part of the allied armies or of the civilian 
population. 

About 4.30 on the next afternoon shots w^ere fired from the 
left bank of the Mense and replied to by the Germans in 
Andeune. The village of Andenne had been isolated from the; 
district on the left bank of the Meuse by the destruction of the 
bridge, and there is nothing to suggest that the firing on the 
left came from the inhabitants of Andenne. Almost imme- 
diately, however, the slaughter of these inhabitants began, and 
continued for over two hours and intermittently during the 
night. MacMne guns were brought into play. The German 
trooiDS were said to be for the most part drunk, and they 
certainly murdered and ravaged unchecked. A reference to 
the German diaries in the Appendix will give some idea of the 
extent to which the army gave itself up to drink through the 
month, of August. 

When the fire slackened about 7 o'clock, many of the towns- b 1. 

people fled in the direction of the quarries ; others remained in 
their houses. At this moment the whole of the district round 
the station was on fire and houses were flaming over a distance 
of 2 kilometres in the direction of the hamlet of Tramaka. The 
little farms which rise one above the other on the high ground 
of the right bank were also burning. 

At 6 o'clock on the following morning, the 21st, the Germans ^ 2. 

began to drag the inhabitants from their houses. Men, women, 
and children were driven into the square where the sexes were 
separated. Three men were then shot, and a fourtli was 
bayoneted. A German colonel was present whose intention in 
the first place appeared to be to shoot all the men. A young 
German girl who had been staying in the neighbourhood inter- 
ceded with him, and after some parleying, some of the prisoners 
were picked out, taken to the banks of the Meuse and there 
shot. The colonel accused the poi)ulation of firing on the 
soldiei-s, but there is no reason to think that any of them had 
done so, and no inquiry appears to have been made. 

About 400 people lost their lives in this massacre, some on 
the banks of the Meuse, where they were shot according to 
orders given, and some in the cellars of the houses where they 
had taken refuge. Eight men belonging to one family were 
murdered. Another man was placed close to a macliine gun 
which w-as fired through him. His v^^ife brought his body 
home on a wheel-bar w. The Germans broke into her house 

u 28300 P. 



16 

and ransacked it, and piled up all the eatables in a Leap on 
the floor and relieved themselves upon it. 

A hair-dresser was murdered in his kitchen where he was 
sitting with a child on each knee. A paralytic was murdered 
in his garden. After this came the general sack of the town. 
Many of the inhabitants who escaped the massacre were kept 
as prisoners and compelled to clear the houses of corpses and 
bury them in trenches. These prisoners were subsequently 
used as a shelter and protection for a pontoon bridge which the 
Germans had built across the river and were so used to pre- 
vent the Belgian forts from firing upon it. 

A few days later the Germans celebrated a Fete Nocturne 
in the square. Hot wine, looted in the town, was drunk, and 
the women were compelled to give three cheers for the Kaiser 
and to sing " Deutschland tiber Alles." 

Namur District. 

^ 17 The fight round Namur was accompanied by sporadic 

outrages. Near Marchovelette wounded men were murdered 
in a farm by German soldiers. The farm was set on fire. A 
German cavalryman rode away holding in front of him one of 
the farmer's daughters crying and dishevelled. 

blO. At Temploux on the 23rd August a professor of modern 

languages at the College of Namur was shot at his front door 
by a German officer. Before he died he asked the officer the ■ 
reason for this brutality, and the officer replied that he had lost 
his temper because some civilians had fired upon the Germans 
as they entered the village. This allegation was not proved. 
The Belgian army was still operating in the district, and it 
may well be that it was from them that the shots in question 
proceeded. After the murder the house was burnt. 

h 11. On the 24th and 25th of August massacres were carried out 

at Surice, in which many persons belonging to the professional 
classes, as well as others, were killed. 

b8. Namur was entered on the 24th August. The troops 

signalised their entry by firing on a crowd of 150 unarmed 
unresisting civilians, ten alone of whom escaped. 

h 11. A witness of good standing who was in Namur describes 

how the town was set on fire systematically in six different 
places. As the inhabitants fled from the burning houses they 
were shot by the German troops. Not less than 140 houses 
were burnt. 

b 12. On the 25th the hospital at Namur was set on fire with 

inflammable pastilles, the pretext being that soldiers in the 
hospital had fired upon the Germans. 

b 13. At Denee, on the 28th of August, a Belgian soldier who had 

been taken prisoner saw three civilian fellow prisoners shot. 
One was a cripple and another an old man of eighty who was 
paralysed. It was alleged by two German soldiers that these 



17 

men liad sliot at, them with riiles. Neither of them had rifles, 
nor had they anything in their pockets. The witness actually 
saw the Germans search them and nothing was found. 

Charleroi District. 

In Tamines, a large village on the Meuse between Namur 1^ 14. 
and Charleroi, the advance guard of the German army appeared 
in the hrst fortnight in August, and in this as well as in other 
villages in the district, it is proved that a large ninnber of 
civilians, among them aged people, women and children, were 
deliberately killed by the soldiers. One witness describes how 
she saw a Belgian boy of fifteen shot on the village green at 
Tamines, and a day or two later on the same green a little girl 
and her two brothers (name given) who were looking at the 
German soldiers, were killed before her eyes for no apparent 
reason. 

The principal massacre at Tamines took place about August b 15. 
the 23rd. A witness describes how he saw the public square 
littered with corpses, and after a search found those of his wife 
and child, a little girl of seven. 

Another witness, who lived near Tamines, went there on b 20. 

August 27th, and says : "It is absolutely destroyed and a mass 
of ruins." 

At Morlanwelz, about this time, the British army, together ^ 16. 

with some French cavalry were compelled to retire before the 
(:}erman troops. The latter took the burgomaster and his man- 
servant prisoner and shot them both in front of the Hotel de 
Ville at Peronne (Belgium), where the bodies were left in the 
street for 48 hours. They burnt the Hotel de Ville and 62 
houses. The usual accusation of firing by civilians was made. 
It is strenuously denied by the witness, who declares that three 
or four days before the arrival of the Germans, circulars had 
been distributed to every house and placards had been posted 
in the town ordering the deposit of all firearms at the Hotel de 
ViUe and that this order had been complied with. 

At Monceau-sur-Sambre, on the 21st August, a young man of b 17, 
eighteen was shot in his garden. His father and brother were 
seized in their house and shot in the courtyard of a neighbouring- 
country house. The son was shot first. The father was 
compelled to stand close to' the feet of his son's corpse and to fix 
his eyes upon him while he himself was shot. The corpse 
of the young man shot in the garden was carried into the 
house and put on a bed. The next morning the Germans asked 
where the corpse was. When they found it was in the house, 
they fetched straw, packed it round the bed on which the corpse 
was lying and set fire to it and burnt the house down. A great 
many houses were burnt in Monceau. 

A vivid picture of the events at Montigny-sur-Sambre has b 18. 

been given by a witness of high standing who had exceptional 

B 2 



18 

opportunities of observation. In tlie early morning of Saturday, 
August 22n(l, Uhlans reached Montigny. The French army was 
about 4 kilometres away, but on a hill near the village were a 
detachment of French about 150 to 200 strong lying in ambush. 
At about 1.30 the main body of the German army began to arrive. 
Marching with them were two groups of so-called hostages, about 
400 in^ all. Of these, 300 were surrounded with a rop)e held by 
the front, rear, and outside men. The French troops in ambush 
opened lire, and immediately the Germans commenced to destroy 
the town. Incendiaries Avith a distinctive badge on their arm 
Avent down the main street throwing handfuls of inflammatory 
and explosive pastilles into the houses. These pastilles were 
cari-ied by them in bags, and in this way about 130 houses were 
destroyed in the main street. By 10.30 p.m. some 200 more 
hostages had been collected. These were drawn from Montigny 
itself, and on that night about 50 men, women, and children 
Avere placed on the bridge over the Sambre and kept there all 
night. Tlie bridge was similarly guarded for a day or two, 
apparently either from a fear that it was mined or in the belief 
that these men, women, and children would afford some pro- 
tection to the Germans in the event of the French attempting to 
storm the bridge. At one period of the German occupation of 
Montigny, eight nuns of the Order of Ste. Marie were captives 
on the bridge. House burning was accompanied bj^ murder, 
and on the Monday morning 27 civilians from one parish alone 
were seen lying dead in the hospital, 
fo 19 io b 25. Other outrages committed at Jumet, Bouffioulx, Charleroi, 
Marchiennes-au-Pont, Couillet, and Maubeuge are described in 
the depositions given in the Appendix. 

DiNANT. 

A clear statement of the outrages at Dinant, which many 
b. 29. travellers will recall as a singularly picturesque town on the 
b. 30. Meuse, is given by one witness, who says that the Germans 
began burning houses in the Rue St. Jacques on the 21st August, 
and that every house in the street was burnt. On the following 
day an engagement took place between the French and the 
Germans, and the witness spent the whole day in the cellar of 
a bank ^Yiih his wife and children. On the morning of the 
23rd, about 5 o'clock, firing ceased, and almost immediately 
afterwards a party of Germans came to the house. They rang 
the bell and began to batter at the door and windows. The 
witness's wife went to the door and two or three Germans came 
in. The family were ordered out into the street. There the.y 
found another family, and the two families were driven with 
their hands above iheir heads along the Rue Grande. All the 
houses in the street were burning. The party was eventually 
put into a forge where there were a number of other prisoners, 
about a hundred in all, and were kept there from 11 a.m. till 



19 

2 p.m. They were tlieii taken to the prison. There they were 
assembled in a courtyard and searched. No arms were found. 
They were then passed tlirough into the prison itself and 
put into cells. The witness and his wife were separated 
from each other. During the next hour the witness heard 
rifle shots continually, and noticed in the corner of a court- 
yard leading off the row of cells the body of a young man with a 
mantle thrown over it. He recognised the mantle as having 
belonged to his wife. The witness's daughter was allowed to 
go out to see what had happened to her mother, and the witness 
himself was allowed to go across the courtyard half an hour 
afterwards for the same purpose. He found his wife lying on 
the floor in a room. She had bullet wounds in four places, but 
was alive and told her husband to return to the children, and 
he did so. About 5 o'clock in the evening he saw the Germans 
bringing out all the young and middle-aged men from the cells, 
and ranging their prisoners, to the number of 40, in three rows 
in the middle of the courtyard. About 20 Germans were 
drawn up opposite, but before anything was done there was a 
tremendous fusillade from some point near the prison and the 
civilians were hurried back to their cells. Half an hour later 
the same 40 men were brought back into the courtyard. 
Almost immediately there was a second fusillade like the first 
and they were driven back to the cells again. About 7 o'clock 
the witness and other prisoners were brought out of their cells 
and marched out of the prison. They went between two lines 
of troops to Roche Bayard about a kilometre away. An hour 
later the women and children were separated and the prisoners 
were brought back to Dinant, passing the prison on their way. 
Just outside the prison the witness saw three lines of bodies 
which he recognised as being those of neighbours. They were 
nearlj^ all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them. 
There were about 120 bodies. The prisoners were then taken 
up to the top of the hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay 
there till 8 o'clock in the morning. On the following day they 
were put into cattle trucks and taken thence to Coblenz. For 
three months they remained prisoners in Germany, 

Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near b 26. 
the prison. About 90 bodies were seen lying on the top of one 
another in a grass square opposite the convent. They included 
many relatives of a witness whose deposition will be found in 
the Appendix. This witness asked a German officer why her 
husband had been shot, and he told her that it was because two 
of her sons had been in the civil guard and had shot at the 
Germans. As a matter of fact one of her sons was at that time 
in Liege and the other in Brussels. It is stated that beside the 
90 corpses referred to above, 60 corpses of civilians were 
recovered from a hole in the brewery yard and that 48 bodies of b 27. 
women and children were found in a garden. The town was 
systematically set on fire by hand grenades. 



20 

b 28. Another witness saw a little girl of seven, one of whose legs 

was broken and the other injured by a bayonet. 

We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of 
Dinant gave any provocation, or that any other defence can be 
put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens. 

As regards this town and the advance of the German army 
from Dinant to Rethel on the Aisne, a graphic account is given 
Appendix B. in the diary of a Saxon officer.^ This diary confirms what is 
clear from the evidence as a whole both as regards these and 
other districts, that civilians were constantly taken as prisoners, 
often dragged from their homes and shot under the direction of 
the authorities without any charge being made against them. 
An event of the kind is thus referred to in a diary entry ; 
" Apparently 200 men were shot. There must have been 
" some innocent men amongst them. In future we shall have 
" to hold an inquiry as to their guilt instead of shooting them." 
The shooting of inhabitants, women and children as well as 
men, went on after the Germans had passed Dinant on their 
way into France. The houses and villages were pillaged and 
property wantonly destroyed. 



THE AERSCHOT, MALINES, VILVORDE, AND 
LOUVAIN QUADRANGLE.- 

About August 9 a powerful screen of cavalrj?- masking the 
general advance of the first and second German armies was 
thrown forward into the provinces of Brabant and Limburg. 
The progress of the invaders was contested at several points, 
probably near Tirlemont on the Louvain road, and at Diest, 
Haelen, and SchafEen, on the Aerschot road, by detachments of 
the main Belgian army which was drawn up upon the line of 
the Dyle. In their preliminary skirmishes the Belgians more 
than once gained advantages, but after the fall on August 15 
of the last of the Liege forts, the great line of railway which 
runs through Liege towards Brussels and Antwerp) in one 
direction and towards Namur and the French frontier in 
another, fell into the hands of the Germans. From this 
moment the advance of the main army was swift and irre- 
sistible. On August 19 Louvain and Aerschot were occupied 
by the Germans, the former without resistance, the latter after 
a struggle which resulted early in the day in the retirement of 

^ A copy of this diary was given by the French military authorities to 
the British Headquarters Staff in France, and the latter have communicated 
it to the Committee. It wiU be found in Appendix B. after the German 
diaries shown to us by the British War Office. 

1 special map of this district will be found facing page 15. 



21 

the Belgian army upon Antwerp. On August 20 the invaders 
made their entry into Brussels. 

The quadrangle of territory bounded by the towns of 
Aerschot, Malines, Vilvorde, and Louvain, is a rich agricultural 
tract, studded with small villages and comprising two con- 
siderable cities, Louvain and Malines. This district on 
August 19 passed into the hands of the Germans, and, owing 
perhaps to its proximity to Antwerp, then the seat of the 
Belgian Government and headquarters of the Belgian army, 
it became from that date a scene of chronic outrage, with 
respect to which the Committee has received a great mass of 
evidence. 

The witnesses to these occurrences are for the most part 
imperfectly educated persons who cannot give accurate dates, 
so it is impossible in some cases to fix the dates of particular 
crimes ; and the total number of outrages is so great that we 
cannot refer to all of them in the body of the report or give 
all the depositions relating to them in the Appendix. The 
main events, however, are abundantly clear, and group them- 
selves naturally round three dates — August 19th, August 25th, 
and September 11th. 

The arrival of the Germans in the district on August the 19th 
was marked by systematic massacres and other outrages at 
Aerschot itself, Gelrode and some other villages. 

On August 25th the Belgians, sallying out of the defences of 
Antwerp, attacked the German positions at Malines, drove the 
enemy from the town and reoccupied many of the villages, 
such as Sempst, Hofstade, and Eppeghem, in the neighbourhood. 
And just as numerous outrages against the civilian population 
had been the immediate consequence of the temporary repulse of 
the German vanguard from Fort Fleron, so a large body of 
depositions testify to the fact that a sudden outburst of cruelty 
was the response of the German army to the Belgian victory at 
Malines. The advance of the German army to the Dyle had 
been accompanied by reprehensible and indeed (in certain k 1 to k 4 
cases) terrible outrages, but these had been, it would appear, 
isolated acts, some of which are attributed by witnesses to 
indignation at the check at Haelen, while others may have been 
the consequence of drunkenness. But the battle of Malines had 
results of a different order. In the first place it was the occasion 
of numerous murders committed by the German army in 
retreating through the villages of Sempst, Hofstade, Eppeghem, 
Elewyt, and elsewhere. In the second place, it led, as it will be 
shown later, to the massacres, plunderings, and burnings at 
Louvain, the signal for which was provided by shots exchanged 
between the German army retreating after its repulse at Malines 
and some members of the German garrison of Louvain, who 
mistook their fellow countrymen for Belgians. Lastly, the 
encounter at Malines seems to have stung the Germans into 
establishing a reign of terror in so much of the district com- 



22 

prised in the quadrangle as remained in tlieir power. Many 
houses were destroyed and their contents stolen. Hundreds of 
prisoners were locked up in various churches, and were in some 
instances marched about from one village to another. Some of 
these were finallj'' conducted to Louvain and linked up with 
the bands of prisoners taken in Louvain itself, and sent to 
Germany and elsewhere. 

On September 11th, when the Germans were driven out of 
Aerschot across the river Demer by a successful sortie from 
Antwerp, murders of civilians were taking place in the villages 
which the Belgian army then recaptured from the Germans. 
These crimes bear a strong resemblance to those committed in 
Hofstade and other villages after the battle of Lfalines. 



Aerschot and District. 

Period 1. (August 19th and following days). 

Aerschot. 

c 1. The German army entered Aerschot quite early in the 

morning. Workmen going to their work were seized and 
taken as hostages. 

c 3. The Germans, apparently already irritated, proceeded to 

make a search for the priests and threatened to burn the convent 
if the priests should happen to be found there. One priest was 
accused of inciting the inhabitants to fire on the troops, and 
when he denied it, the Burgomaster was blamed by the officer. 

c 20. The priest then showed the officer the notices on the walls, 
signed by the Burgomaster, warning the inhabitants not to 
intervene in hostilities. 

c a. It appears that they accused the priest of having fired at the 

Germans from the tower of the church. This is important, 
because it is one of the not infrequent cases in which the 
Germans ascribed firing from a church to priests, whereas in 
fact this firing came from Belgian soldiers, and also because it 
seems to show that the Germans from the moment of their 
arrival in Aerschot, were seeking to pick a quarrel with the 
inhabitants, and this goes far to explain their subsequent 

c 1. conduct. Hostages were collected, until 200 men, some of 
whom were invalids, were gathered together, 
c 1, c G, c 15. Monsieur Tielmans, the Burgomaster, was then ordered by 
some German officers to address the crowd and to tell them to 
hand in any weapons which they might have in their possession 
at the Town Hall, and to warn them that anyone who was found 
c 1, c 4. with weapons would be killed. As a matter of fact, the arms 
in the possession of civilians had already been collected at the 
beginning of the war. The Burgomaster's speech resulted in 
the delivery of one gun which had been used for pigeon 
shooting. The hostages were then released. Throughout the 

c 7. day the town was looted by the soldiers. Many shop windows 
weie broken, and the contents of the shop fronts ]-ansacked. 



23 

A shot was fired about 7 o'clock in the evening, l3y which c ^• 
time many of the soldiers were drunk. The Germans were not 
of one mind as to the direction from which the shot proceeded. 
Some said it came from a jeweller's shop, and some said it came 
from other houses. No one was hit by this shot, but thereafter 
German soldiers began to fire in various directions at people in 
the streets. 

It is said that a German general or colonel was killed at the 
Burgomaster's house. As far as the Committee have been able 
to ascertain, the identity of the officer has never been revealed. 
The German version of the story is that he was killed by the 
fifteen-year-old son of the Burgomaster ; the Committee, how- c 7. 

ever, is satisfied by the evidence of several independent 
witnesses that some German officers were standing at the 
window of the Burgomaster's house, that a large body of 
German troops were in the square, that some of these soldiers 
were drunk and let off their rifles, that in the volley one of the 
officers standing at the window of the Burgomaster's house fell, 
that at the time of the accident the wife and son of the Burgo- 
master had gone to take refuge in the cellar, and that neither 
the Burgomaster nor his son were in the least degree respon- 
sible for the occurrence which served as the pretext for their 
subsequent execution, and for the firing and sack of the town.---' 

* This account agrees substantially witli tliat given in a letter, written 
by Mme. Tielmans, the Bui'gomaster's wife, which is printed in the fifth 
report of the Belgian Commission. The letter is as follows : 

" This is how it happened, About 4 in the afternoon my husband 
was giving cigars to the sentinels stationed at the door. I saw that 
the General and his Aides-de-Camp were looking at us fi-om the 
balcony, and told him to come indoors. Just then I looked towards 
the Grand Place, where more than 2,000 Germans were encamped, 
and distinctly saw two columns of smoke followed by a fusilade : the 
Germans were firing on the houses, and forcing their way into them. 
My husband, children, servant, and myself had just time to dash into 
the staircase leading to the cellar. The Germans were even firing 
into the passages of the houses. After a few minutes of indescribable 
horror, one of the General's Aides-de-Camp came down and said : 
' The Genei-al is dead, where is the Burgomaster ? ' My husband said 
to me, ' This will be serious for me.' As he went forward, I said to 
the Aide-de-Camp, ' You can see for yourself, sir, that my husband 
did not fire.' ' That makes no dift'erence,' he said, ' he is responsible.' 
My husband was taken off. My son, who was at my side, took us 
into another cellar. The same Aide-de-Camp came and dragged him 
out, and made him walk in front of him, kicking him as he went. The 
poor boy could hardly walk. That morning when they came to the 
town the Germans had fired through the windows of the houses, and a 
bullet had come into the room where my son was, and he had been 
wounded in the calf by the ricochet. After my husband and son had 
gone, I was dragged all through the house iDy Germans, with their 
revolvers levelled at my. head. I was compelled to see their dead 
General. Then my daughter and I were thrown into the street 
without cloaks or anything. We v/ere massed in the Grand Place, 
surroiinded ])y a cordon of soldiers, and compelled to witness the 
destruction of our beloved town. And then by the hideous light of 
the fire I saw them for the last time, about one in the morning, my 
husband and my boy tied together. My brother-in-law was behind 
them. They were being led out to execiition." 



24 

cl9,c7, cl5. The houses were set on fire with special apparatus, while 
people were dragged from their houses already burning, and 
some were shot in the streets, 

c 5; c 6, c 13. Many civilians were marched to a field on the road to 
Louvain and kept there all night. Meanwhile many of the 
c 9. inhabitants were collected in the square. By this time very 
many of the troops were drunk. 
c 6c e 8. On the following day a number of the civilians were shot 

under the orders of an officer, together with the Burgomaster, 
his brother and his son. Of this incident, which is spoken to 
by many witnesses, a clear account is given : " German soldiers 
" came and too]*r. hold of me and every other man they could 
" see, and eventually there were about 60 of us, including some 
" of eighty (i.e., years of age), and they made us accompany 
" them .... all the prisoners had to walk with their hands 
" above their heads. We were then stopped and made to 
" stand in a line, and an officer, a big fat man who had a 
" blueish uniform .... came along the line and picked out 
" the Burgomaster, his brother, and his son, and some men 
" who had been employed under the Red Cross. In all, ten 
" men were picked out .... the remainder were made to 
" turn their backs upon the ten. I then heard some shots 
" fired, and I and the other men turned round and we saw all 
" the ten men, including the Burgomaster, were lying on the 

c 4, c 9, c 17, " ground." This incident is spoken to by other witnesses also : 
^ ^^- some of their depositions appear in the Appendix. 



Gelrode. 

a 39. On the same day, at Gelrode, a small village close to 

Aerschot, 25 civilians were imprisoned in the church; seven 
were taken out by 15 German soldiers in charge of an officer 
just outside. One of the seven tried to run away, whereupon 
all the six who remained behind alive were shot. This was 
on the night of the 19th August. No provocation whatever 
had been given. The men in question had been searched, and 
no arms had been found upon them. Here, as at Aerschot, 
precautions had been taken previously to secure the delivery 
up of all arms in the hands of civilians. 

c 41, Some of the survivors were compelled to dig graves for the 

c 42. seven. At a later date the corpses were disinterred and re- 
buried in consecrated ground. The marks of the bullets in the 
brick wall against which the six were shot were then still 

^ ^^' plainly visible. On the same day a woman was shot by some 
German soldiers as she was walking home. This was done at 
a distance of 100 yards and for no apparent reason. 

c 46. An account of a murder by an officer at Campenhout is 

c 48-c 52, given in a later part of this Report, and depositions relating to 
e 53-c 59. Rotselaer, Tremeloo, and Wespelaer will be found in the 
c ;)0-c G4. Appendix. 



25 

The Committee is specially impressed by the character of 
the outrages committed in the smaller Aallages. Many of these 
are exceptionally shocking and cannot be regarded as contem- 
plated or prescribed by the responsible commanders of the 
troops by whom they were committed. The inference, however, 
which we draw from these occurrences is that when once troops 
have been encouraged in a career of terrorism, the more savage 
and brutal natures, of whom there are some in every large army, 
are liable to run to wild excess, more particularly in those 
regions where they are least subject to observation and control. 



Aerschot and District. 
Period II. (August 25th.) 

Immediately after the battle of Malines, which resulted in 
the evacuation by the Germans of the district of Malines, 
Sempst, Hofstade, and Eppeghem, a long series of murders 
were committed either just before or during the retreat of the 
army. Many of the inhabitants who were unarmed, including 
women and yo^^ng children, were killed— some of them under 
revolting circumstances. 

Evidence given goes to show that the death of these villagers 
was due not to accident but to deliberate purpose. The wounds 
were generally stabs or cuts, and for the most part appear to 
have been inflicted with the bayonet. 

Malines. 

In Malines itself many bodies were seen. One witness saw d 1. 
a German soldier cut a woman's breasts after he had murdered 
her, and saw many other dead bodies of women in the streets. 

Hofstade. 

In Hofstade a number of houses had been set on fire and d 10-d 6,5 
many corpses were seen, some in houses, some in back yards, 
and some in the streets. 

Several examples are gi^'en below. 

Two witnesses speak to having seen the body of a young d 64, d 65. 
man pierced by bayonet thrusts with the wrists cut also. 

On a side road the corpse of a civilian was seen on his d 33. 
doorstep with a bayonet wound in his stomach, and by his side 
the dead body of a boy of five or six with his hands nearly 
severed. 

The corpses of a woman and boy were seen at the black- d 31. 
smith's. They had been killed with the bayonet. 

. In a cafe a young man, also killed with the bayonet was d 16. 
holding his hands together as if in the attitude of supplication. 



26 

d 15. Two young women were lying in the back yard of the house. 

One had her breasts cut off, the otlier had been stabbed. 
d 52. A young man had been hacked with the bayonet until his 

entrails protruded. He also had his hands joined in the 

attitude of prayer. 
d 13. In the garden of a house in the main street, bodies of two 

women were ol^served, and in another house the body of a boy 

of 16 with two bayonet wounds in the chest. 

Sempst. 

In Sempst a similar condition of affairs existed. Houses 
were burning, and in some of them were the charred remains 
of civilians. 
d 66, d 69. In a bicycle shop a witness saw the burned corpse of a man. 

d 72. Other witnesses speak to this incident. 

^ 67^ Another civilian, unarmed, was shot as he was running 

away. As will be remembered all the arms had been given up 
some time before by order of the burgomaster. 

d 83. The corpse of a man with his legs cut off, who was partly 

bound, was seen by another witness, who also saw a girl of 
seventeen dressed only in a chemise and in great distress. She 
alleged that she herself and otlier girls had been dragged into a 
field, stripped naked and violated, and that some of them had 
been killed with the bayonet. 

d 84. Weerde. — At Weerde four corpses of civilians w^ere lying in 

the road. It was said that these men had fired upon the 
German soldiers ; but this is denied. The arms had been 
given up long before. 

d 85. Two children w^ere killed in a village, apparently Weerde, 

quite wantonly as they were standing in tlie road wnth their 
mother. They were three or four years old and were killed 
Avith the bayonet. 

A small farm burning close by formed a convenient means 
of getting rid of the bodies. They were thrown into the flames 
from the bayonets. It is right to add that no commissioned 
officer was present at this time. 

d 87. Eppeghem. — At Eppeghem, on the 25th of August, a pregnant 

woman who had been wounded with a bayonet w^as discovered 
in the Convent. She was dying. On the road six dead bodies 
of labourers were seen. 

d 90. Elewyt. — At Elewyt a man's naked body was tied up to a 

ring in the w^all in the backyard of a house. He was dead, and 
his corpse w^as mutilated in a manner too horrible to record. 
A w^oman's naked body was also found in a stable abutting on 
the same backyard. 

d 92. ViLVORDE. — At Vilvorde corpses of civilians were also found. 

These villages are all on the line from Malines to Brussels. 

d 94. BooRT Meerbeek. — At Boort Meerbeek a German soldier 

was seen to fire three times at a little girl of five years old. 



27 

Having failed to hit lier, he subsequently bayoneted her. He 
was killed with the butt end of a rifle by a Belgian soldier who 
had seen him commit this murder from a distance. 

Herent. — At Herent the charred body of a civilian was d 95. 
found in a butcher's shop, and in a hand cart 20 yards away 
was the dead body of a labourer. 

Two eye-witnesses relate that a German soldier shot a d 97. 
civilian and stabbed him with a bayonet as he lay. He then d 98- 
made one of these witnesses, a civilian prisoner, smell the blood 
on the bayonet. 

Haecht. — At Haecht the bodies of 10 civilians were seen d 101, d 104. 
lying in a row by a brewery wall. d 105. 

In a labourer's house, which had been broken up, the 
mutilated corpse of a woman of 30 to 35 was discovered. 

A child of three with its stomach cut open by a bayonet was 
lying near a house. 

Werchter. — At Werchter the corpses of a man and woman d 110. 
and four younger persons were found in one house. It is stated 
that they had been murdered because one of the latter, a girl, 
would not allow the Germans to outrage her. 

This catalogue of crimes does not by any means represent 
the sum total of the depositions relating to this district laid 
before the Conmiittee. The above are given merely as examples 
of acts which the evidence shows to have taken place in 
numbers that might have seemed scarcely credible. 

In the rest of the district, that is to say, Aerschot and the 
other villages from which the Germans had not been driven, the 
effect of the battle was to cause a recrudescence of murder, arson, 
pillage, and cruelty, which had to some extent died down after 
the 20th or 21st August. 

In Aerschot itself fresh prisoners seem to have been taken c 2. 

and added to those who w^ere already in the church, since it 
would appear that prisoners ^vere kept to some extent in the 
church during the whole of the German occupation of Aerschot. 
The second occasion on which large numbers of prisoners were 
put there was shortly after the battle of Malines, and it w^as 
then that the priest of Gelrode was brought to Aerschot church, c 24, c 25, 
treated abominably and finally murdered. c 26. 

One witness describes the scene graphically : " The whole c 23. 

of the prisoners — men, women, and children — were placed in 

the church. Nobody was allowed to go outside the church 

to obey the calls of nature. The church had to be used for 

that purpose. We were afterwards allowed to go outside the 

church for this purpose, and then I saw the clergjmian of 

Gelrode standing by the wall of the church with his hands 

above his head, being guarded by soldiers." The actual 

details of the murder of the priest are as follows : The priest 

was struck several times by the soldiers on the head. He was 

pushed up against the wall of the church. He asked in Flemish 



to be allowed to stand witk liis face to the wall, and tried to 
turn round. The Germans stopped him, and tiien turned him 
with his face to the wall, with his hands above his head. An 
hour later the same witness saw the priest still standing there. 
He was then led away by the Germans a distance of about 
50 yards. There, with his face against the wall of a house, he 
was shot by five soldiers. 

Other murders of which we have evidence appear in the 

Appendix. 

^ 15. Some of the prisoners in the church at Aerschot were 

c 20, actually kept there until the arrival of the Belgian army, on 

c 21. September 11th, when they were released. Others were 

inarched to Louvain, and eventually merged with other 

prisoners, both from Louvain itself and the surrounding 

districts, and taken to Germany and elsewhere. 

It is said by one witness that about 1,500 were marched to 
Louvain, and that the journey took six hours. 
c 25. The journey to Louvain is thus described by a witness : We 

were all marched off to Louvain, walking. There \vere some 
very old people, amongst others a man 90 years of age. The 
very old people Avere drawn in carts and barrows 1)y the younger 
men. There was an officer with a bicycle, who shouted, as 
people fell out by the side of the road, " Shoot them." 



Aerschot and District. 
Period IIL (September.) 



It is unnecessary to describe with much particularity the 

c 29, c 30. events of the period beginning about September 10th. The 

c 32, c 36. Belgian soldiers who had recaptured the place found corpses of 

c 31. civilians, who must have been murdered in Aerschot itself, just 

as they found them in Sempst and the other villages on 

August 25th. Some of these bodies were found in wells, and 

some had been burnt alive in their houses. 

c 32, c 34. The prisoners released by the Belgian army from the church 

d 107. were almost starved. 

At Haecht several children had been murdered, one of two 
or three years old was found nailed to the door of a farmhouse 
by its hands and feet, a crime which seems almost incredible, 
but the evidence for which we feel bound to accept. In the 
garden of this house was the body of a girl, who had been shot 
in the forehead. 

d. 11.^-121. Capeixe-au-Bois. — At Capelle-au-Bois two children were 

murdered in a cart, and their corpses were seen by many 
witnesses at different stages of the cart's journey. 

d 89. Eppeghem. — At Eppeghem the dead body of a child of two 

was seen pinned to the ground with a German lance. Same 



29 

witness saw a mutilated woman alive near Weerde on the same 
day. 

Tremeloo. — Belgian soldiers on patrol duty found a young c 57. 
girl naked on the ground, covered with scratches. She com- 
plained of having been violated. On the same day an old 
woman was seen kneeling by the body of her husband, and she 
told them that the Germans had shot him as he was trying to 
escape from the house. 



LOUVAIN AND DISTRICT. 



The events spoken to as having occurred in and around 
Louvain between the 1 9th and the 25th of August deserve 
close attention. 

For six days the Germans were in peaceful occux^ation of e "i. 

the city. No houses were set on fire — no citizens killed. There 
was a certain amount of looting of empty houses, but otherwise 
discipline was effectively maintained. The condition of Louvain 
during these days was one of relative peace and quietude, 
presenting a striking contrast to the previous and contempo- 
raneous conduct of the German army elsewhere. 

Gn the evening of August 25th a sudden change takes 
place. The Germans, on that day repulsed by the Belgians, 
had retreated to and re-occupied Louvain. Immediately the 
devastation of that city and the holocaust of its population 
commences. The inference is irresistible that the army as a 
whole wreaked its vengeance on the civil population and the 
buildings of the city in revenge for the setback which the 
Belgian arms had inflicted on them. A subsidiary cause 
alleged was the assertion, often made before, that civilians had 
fired upon the German army. 

The depositions which relate to Louvain are numerous, and e 1, 
are believed by the Committee to present a true and fairly 
complete picture of the events of the 25th and 26th August 
and subsequent days. We find no grounds for thinking that ^ ^" 

the inhabitants fired upon the German army on the evening 
of the 25th August. Eye-witnesses worthy of credence detail 
exactly when, where, and how the firing commenced. Such 
firing was by Germans on Germans. No impartial tribunal 
could, in our opinion, come to any other conclusion. 

On the evening of the 25th firing could be heard in the e 1- 

direction of Herent, some three kilometres from Louvain. An 
alarm was sounded in the city. There was disorder and con- 
fusion, and at 8 o'clock horses attached to baggage wagons 
stampeded in the street and rifle fire commenced. This was in 
the Rue de la Station and came from the German police guard 
(21 in number), who, seeing the troops arrive in disorder, thought 
it was the enemy. Then the corps of incendiaries got to work. 
They had broad belts with the words " Gottmit uns " and their 



30 

equipment consisted of a hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and 
a revolver. Fires blazed up in the direction of the Law Courts, 
St. Martin's Barracks, and later in the Place de la Station. 
Meanwhile an incessant fusillade ^vas kept up on the windows 
of the houses. In their efforts to escape the flames the inhabi- 
tants climbed the walls. " My mother and servants," says a 
witness, " had to do the same and took refuge at Monsieur A., 
Avhose cellars are vaulted and afforded a better protection 
than mine. A little later we withdrew to Monsieur A.'s stables, 
Avhere about 30 people who had got there by climbing the 
walls, were to be found. Some of these poor wretches had 
to climb twenty walls. A ring came at the bell. We opened 
the door. Several civilians flung themselves under the 
porch. The Germans were firing upon them from the street. 
Every moment new fires were lighting up, accompanied by 
explosions. In the middle of the night I heard a knock at 
the outer door of the stable which led into a little street, and 
heard a woman's voice crying for help. I opened the door, 
and just as I was going to let her in, a rifle shot fired from the 
street by a German soldier rang out and the woman fell dead 
at my feet. About 9 in the morning things got quieter, and 
we took the opportunity of venturing into the street. A 
German who was carrying a silver pyx and a number of boxes 
of cigars, told us we were to go to the station where trains 
would be waiting for us. Wlien we got to the Place de la 
Station we saw in the Square 7 or 8 dead bodies of murdered 
civilians. Not a single house in the place was standing. A 
whole row of houses behind the station at Blauwput was 
burnt. Alter being driven hither and thither interminably 
by officers, who treated us roughly and insulted us throughout, 
we were divided." The prisoners were then distributed 
between different bodies of troops and marched in the direction 
of Herent. Seventy-seven inhabitants of Louvain, including a 
number of people of good position (the names of several are 
given) were thus taken to Herent. " We found the village of 
Herent in flames, so much so that we had to quicken up to 
prevent ourselves from being suffocated and burnt up by the 
flames in the middle of the road. Half burnt corpses of 
civilians were lying in front of the houses. During a halt 
soldiers stole cattle and slaughtered them where they stood. 
Firing started on our left. We were told it was the civilians 
firing, and that we were going to be shot. The truth is that 
it was the Germans themselves who ivere firing to frighten 
us. There was not a single civilian in the neighbourhood. 
Shortly afterwards we proceeded on our march to Malines. 
We were insulted and threatened. . . . The officers 
were worse than the men. We got to Campenhout about 
7 p.m., and were locked into the church with all _ the 
male population of the village. Some priests had joined 
our numbers. We had had nothing to eat or drink since 



ai 

" the evening of the day before. A few compassionate 
" soldiers gave us water to drink, but no official took the trouble 
" to see that we were fed." Next day, Thursday, the 27th, a safe- 
conduct to return to Louvain was given, but the prisoners had 
liardly started when they were stopped and taken before a Brigade 
General and handed to another escort. Some were grossly 
ill-treated. They were accused of being soldiers out of uniform, 
and were told they could not go to Louvain ' ' as the town was 
going to be razed to the ground." Other prisoners were added, 
even women and children, until there were more than 200. 
They were then taken towards Malines, released, and told to go to 
that town together, and that those who separated would be fired 
on. Other witnesses corroborate the events described by the 
witness. 

A woman employed as servant by an old gentleman living 
ill the Rue de la Station tells the story of her master's death, e 14. 
" We had supper as usual about 8, but two German officers 
" (who were staying in the house) did not come in to supper that 
" evening. My master went to bed at 8.15, and so did his sou. 
" The servants went to bed at half-past 9. Soon after I got to 
" my bedroom I saw out of my room flames from some burning 
" house nearby. I roused my master and his son. As they 
" came down the stairs they were seized by German soldiers 
" and both were tied up and led out, my master being tied 
" Avitli a rope and his son with a chain. They were dragged 
" outside. I did not actually see what happened outside, but 
" heard subsequently that my master was bayonetted and shot, 
" and that his son was shot. I heard shots from the kitchen 
" where I was, and was present at the burial of my master and 
" his son 13 days later. German soldiers came back into the 
" house and poured some inflammable liquid over the floors and 
" set fire to it. I escaped by another staircase to that which my 
" master and his son had descended." 

On the 26th (Wednesda}'-), in the city of Louvain, massacre, 
fire, and destruction went on. The University, with its Library, e !?• 
1 he church of St. Peter, and many houses were set on fire and 
hurnt to the ground. Citizens were shot and others taken 
])risoners and compelled to go Avith the troops. Soldiers went e 2. 

through the streets saying " Man hat geschossen."* One soldier 
\vas seen going along shooting in the air. 

Many of the people hid in cellars, but the soldiers shot down e 2. 

through the gratings. Some citizens were shot on opening the e 1.3. 
doors, others in endeavouring to escape. Among other persons 
Avhose houses were burnt was an old man of ninety lying 
dangerously ill, who was taken out on his mattress and left lying e 2. 

in his garden all night. He died shortly after in the hospital to 
which a friend took him the following morning. 

On Thursday, the 27th, orders were given that everyone e 18 
should leave the city which was to be razed to the ground. 

* •' They have been shooting." \ 

28300 C 



32 

e 2. Some citizens, iucluding a canon of the Catliedral with. Ms aged 
motlier, were ordered to!go to the station and afterwards to take the 
road to Tirlemont. Among the number were about 20 priests 
■ from Louvain. They were insulted and threatened , but ultimately 
allowed to go free and make their way as best they could, 
women and sick persons among them, to Tirlemont. Other 
groups of prisoners from Louvain were on the same day taken 
by other routes, some early in the morning through various 
villages in the direction of Malines with hands tightly bound 
by a long cord. More prisoners were afterwards added, and all 
made to stay the night in the church at Campenhout. Next 

e 21. day, the 28th, this group, then consisting of about 1,000 men, 
women and children, was taken back to Louvain. The houses 
along the road were burning and many dead bodies of civilians, 
men and women, were seen on the way. Some of the principal 
Streets in Louvain had by that time been burnt out. The prisoners 
were placed in a large building on the cavalry exercise ground — ■ 
" One woman went mad, some children died, others were bori]." 
On the 29th the prisoners were marched along the Malines road, 
and at Herent the women and children and men over 40 wei'e 
allowed to go, the others were taken to Boort Meerbeek, 15 
kilometres from Malines, and told to march straight to Malines 
or be shot. At 11 p.m. they reached the fort of Waelhem and 
were at first fired on by the sentries, but on calling out they 
were Belgians were allowed to pass. These prisoners were 
practically without food from early morning on the 26tli until 
midnight on the 29th. Of the corpses seen on the road some 
had their hands tied behind their backs, others were burnt, 
some had been killed by blows, and some corpses were those of 
children who had been shot. 

c 3. Another witness, a man of independent means, was arrested 

at noon by the soldiers of the 165th Regiment and taken to the 
Place de la Station. He was grossly ill-treated on the way and 
robbed by an officer of his purse and keys. His hands were tied 
behind his back. His wife was kept a prisoner at the other 
side of the station. He was then made to march with about 500 
other prisoners until midnight, slept in the rain that night, and 
next day, having had no food since leaving Louvain, was 
taken to the church in Rotselaer where there were then about 
1,500 prisoners confined, including some infants. No food 
was given, only some water. Next day they were taken through 
Wespelaer and back to Louvain. On the way from Rotselaer 
to Wespelaer 50 bodies were seen, some naked and carbonised 
and imrecognisable. When they arrived at Louvain the Fish 
Market, the Place Marguerite, the Cathedral and many other 
buildings were on fire. In the evening about 100 men, women 
and children were put in horse trucks from which the dung- 
had not been removed, and at 6 next morning left for Cologne. 

4 The wife of this witness was also taken prisoner with her 

husband and her maid, but was separated from him, and she 
saw other ladies made to walk before the soldiers with their 



'S3 

hands above their heads. One, an old lady of eighty-five — 
(name given)— was dragged from her cellar and taken with 
them to the station. They were kept there all night, but set 
free in the morning, Thursday, but shortly afterwards sent to 
Tirlemont on foot. A number of corpses were seen on the 
way. The prisoners, of whom there are said to have been 
thousands, were not allowed even to have water to drink, 
although there were streams on the way from which the soldiers 
drank. Witness was given some milk at a farm, but as she 
raised it to her lips it was taken away from her. 

A priest was taken on the Friday morning, August 28th, and e 18. 
placed at the head of a number of refugees from Wygmael. He 
Avas led through Lou vain, abused and ill-treated, and placed with 
some thousands of other people in the riding school in the Rue 
du Manege. The glass roof broke in the night from the heat 
of burning buildings round. Next day the prisoners were 
marched through the country with an armed guard. Burnt 
farms and burnt corpses were seen on the way. The prisoners 
were finally separated into three groups, and the younger men 
marched through Herent and Bueken to Campenhout, and 
ultimately reached the Belgian lines about midnight on 
Saturday, August 29th. All the houses in Herent, a village of 
about 5,000 inhabitants, had been burnt. 

The massacre of civilians at Lou vain was not confined to 
its citizens. Large crowds of people were brought into Louvain 
from the surrounding districts, not only from Aerschot and 
Gelrode as above mentioned, but also from other places. For 
example, a wdtness describes how many women and. children 
were taken in carts to Louvain, and there placed in a stable. 
Of the hundreds of people thus taken from the various villages e 1. 

and brought to Louvain as prisoners, some were massacred 
there, others were forced to march along with citizens of Louvain 
through various places, some being ultimately sent on the 29th 
to the Belgian lines at Malines, others were taken in trucks to 
Cologne as described below, others were released. An account 
of the massacre of some of these unfortunate civilian prisoners 
given by two witnesses may be quoted. 

" We were all placed in Station St., Louvain, and the German c 45. 

soldiers fired upon us. I saw the corpses of some women in 

the street. I fell down, and a woman who had been shot 

fell on top of me. I did not dare to look at the dead bodies 

" in the street, there were so many of them. All of them had 

been shot by the German soldiers. One woman whom I saw 

lying dead in the street was a Miss J. . . .—about 35, I also 

" saw the body of A . , M . , (a woman). She had been shot, 

I saw an officer pull her corpse underneath a wagon." 

Another witness, who was taken from Aerschot, also describes 

the occurrence : "I was afterwards taken with a large number 

of other civilians and placed in the church at Louvain. Then 

we were taken to Station St., Louvain. There were about 1,500 

C 2 



34 

" civilians of botli sexes, and we had been niarclied from 
" Aerschot to Louvain. When we were in Station St. I felt 
" that something was about to liappen, and I tried to shelter in 
" a doorway. The German soldiers then fired a mitrailleuse 
" and their rifles upon the people, and the people fell on all 
" sides. Two men next to me were killed. I afterwards saw 
c 15. " someone give a signal, and tlie firing ceased. I then ran 
" away ^^^th a married woman named B . . . . (whose maiden 
" name was A . . . . M . . . .), aged 29, who belonged to 
" Aerscliot, but we were again captured. She was shot by the 
" side of me, and I saw her fall. Several other people were 
" shot at the same time. I again ran away, and in my flight 
" saw children falling out of their mothers' arms. I cannot say 
" whether they were shot, or whether they fell from their 
" mothers' arms in the great panic which ensued. I, however, 
" saw children bleeding." 



JonRNEY TO Cologne. 



e o, e 5, e t, 



The greatest number of prisoners from Louvain, however, 
e 10, e 11, were assembled at the station and taken by trains to Cologne, 
e 16, e 17. Several witnesses describe their sufferings and the ill-treatment 
they received on the journey. One of the first trains started in 
the afternoon. It consisted of cattle trucks, about 100 being in 
each truck. It took three days to get to Cologne. The prisoners 
had nothing to eat but a few biscuits each, and they were not 
allowed to get out for water and none was given. On a waggon 
the words " Civilians vAlo shot at tlie soldiers at Louvain " were 
written. Some were marched through Cologne afterwards for 
the people to see. Ropes were put round the necks of some 
and they were told they would be hanged. An order then 
came that they were to be shot instead of hanged. A firing 
squad was prepared, and five or six prisoners were put up, but 
were not shot. After being kept a week at Cologne some of these 
prisoners were taken back — this time only 30 or 40 in a truck — 
and allowed to go free on arriving at Limburg. Several 
Avitnesses who were taken in other trains to Cologne describe 
their experiences in detail. Some of the trucks were abominably 
filthy. Prisoners were not allowed to leave to obey the calls of 
nature; one man who quitted the truck for the purpose was 
killed by a bayonet. Describing what happened to another 
body of prisoners, a witness saj^^s that they were made to cross 
Station Street, where the houses were burning, and taken to the 
station, placed in horse trucks crowded together, men, women, 
and children, in each waggon. They were kept at the station 
during the night and the following day left for Cologne. For 
two days and a half they were without food, and then they 
received a loaf of bread among ten persons, and some water. 
The prisoners were afterwards taken back to Belgium. They 
were, in all, eight days in the train, crowded and almost without 



60 



food. Two of the men went mad. The women and children 
were separated from the men at Brussels. The men were taken 
to a suburb and then to the villages of Herent, Vilvorde and 
Sempst, and afterwards set at liberty. 

This taking of the inhabitants, including some of the 
influential citizens, in groups and marching them to various 
places, and in particular the sending them to Malines and the 
despatch of great numbers to Cologne, must evidently have 
been done under the direction of the higher military authorities. 
The ill-treatment of the prisoners was under the eyes and often 
by the direction or with the sanction of officers, and officers 
themselves took part in it. 

The object of taking many hundreds of prisoners to Cologne 
and back into Belgium is at first sight difficult to understand. 
Possibly it is to be regarded as part of the policy of punish- 
ment for Belgian resistance and general terrorization of the 
inhabitants — possibly as a desire to show these people to the 
population of a German cit^^ and thus to confirm the belief that 
the Belgians had shot at their troops. 

Whatever may have been the case when the burning began 
on the evening of the 25th, it appears clear that the subsequent 
destruction and outrages were done with a set purpose. It 
was not until the 26tli that the Library, and other University 
buildings, the church of St. Peter and many houses were set 
on fire. It is to be noticed that cases occur in the depositions 
in which humane acts by individual officers and soldiers are 
mentioned, or in which officers are said to have expressed regret 
at being obliged to carry out orders for cruel action against the 
civilians. Similarly, we find entries in diaries which reveal a 
genuine pity for the population and disgust at the conduct of 
the army. It appears that a German non-commissioned officer 
stated definitely that he " was acting under orders and executing 
them with great unwillingness." A commissioned officer on 
being asked at Louvain by a witness — a highly educated man 
— about the horrible acts committed by the soldiers, said he 
" was merely executing orders," and that he himself would be 
shot if he did not execute them. Others gave less credible 
excuses, one stating that the inhabitants of Louvain had burnt 
the city themselves because they did not wisli to supply food 
and quarters for the German army. It was to the discipline 
rather than the want of discipline in the army that these 
outrages, which we are obliged to describe as systematic, were 
due, and the special official notices posted on certain houses 
that they were not to be destroyed show the fate which had 
been decreed for the others which were not so marked. 

We are driven to the conclusion that the harrying of the 
villages in the district, the burning of a large part of Louvain, 
the massacres there, the marching but of the prisoners, and the 
transport to Cologne (all done without enquiry as to whether 
the particular persons seized or killed liad committed any 



36 



wrongful act), were due to a calculated policy carried out 
scientifically and deliberately, not merely with the sanction, 
but under the direction of higher military authorities, and were 
not due to any provocation or resistance by the civilian 
poi)ulation. 



TERMONDE. 

To understand the depositions describing what happened at 
Termonde it is necessary to remember that the German army^ 
occupied the town on two occasions, the first, from Friday, 
September the 4th, to Sunday, September the 6th, and again 

f 5. later in the month, about the 16th. The civilians had delivered 
up their arms a fortnight before the arrival of the Germans. 

Early in the month, probably about the 4th, a witness saw 

two civilians murdered by Uhlans. Another witness saw their 

f4, fS. dead bodies which remained in the street for ten days. Two 

hundred civilians were utilised as a screen by the German 

troops about this date. 

f 1. On the 5th the town was partially burnt. One witness was 

f 3. taken prisoner in the street by some German soldiers together 
with several other civilians. At about 12 o'clock some of the 
tallest and strongest men amongst the prisoners were picked out. 
to go round the streets with paraffin. Three or four carts 
containing paraffin tanks were brought up, and a syringe was 
used to put paraffin on to the houses which were then fired. 
The process of destruction began with the houses of rich people, 
and afterwards the houses of the poorer classes were treated in the 
same manner. German soldiers had previously told this witness 
that if the Burgomaster of Termonde, who was out of town, did 
not return by 12 o'clock that day the town would be set on fire. 
The firing of the town was in consequence of his failure to 
return. The prisoners were afterwards taken to a factory and 
searched for weapons. They were subsequently provided with 
passports enabling them to go anywhere in the town but not 
outside. The witness in question managed to effect his escape 
by swimming across the river. 

f 2. Another witness describes how the tower of the church of 

Termonde St. Gilles was utilised by the Belgian troops for 
offensive purposes. They had in fact mounted a machine gun 
there. This witness was subsequently taken prisoner in a cellar 
in Termonde in which he had taken refuge with other people. 
All the men were taken from the cellar and the women were 
left behind. About 70 prisoners in aU were taken ; one, a, 
brewer, who could not walk fast enough, was wounded with a 
bayonet. He fell down and was compelled to get up and follow 
the soldiers. The prisoners had to hold up their hands, and if 
they dropped their hands they were struck on the baclv with 
the butt ends of rifles. They were taken to I.ebbeke, where 



37 

there, were in all 300 prisoners, and there they were locked up 
in the church for three days and with scarcely any food. 

A witness living at Baesrode was taken prisoner with 250 ^ ^^ 

others and kept all night in a field. The prisoners were' 
released on the following morning. This witness saw three 
corpses of civilians, and says that the Germans on Sunday, the 
6th, plundered and destroyed the houses of those who had fled. 
The Germans left on the following day, taking about 30 men f 8, f 9. 
with them, one a man of seventy-two years of age. f ]0, f 11. 

Later in the month civilians were again used as a screen, 
and there is evidence of other acts of outrage. 



ALOST. 

Alost was the scene of fighting between the Belgian and 
German armies during the whole of the latter part of the month 
of September. In connection with the fighting numerous 
cruelties appear to have been perpetrated by the German 
troops. 

On Saturday, the 11th September, a weaver was bayonetted f 12, 
in the street. Another civilian was shot dead at his door on the 
same night. On the following daj^ the witness was taken 
prisoner together with 30 others. The money of the prisoners 
was confiscated, and they were subsequently used as a screen 
for the German troops who were at that moment engaged in a 
conflict with the Belgian army in the town itself. The Germans 
burnt a number of houses at this time. Corpses of 14 civilians 
were seen in the streets on this occasion. 

A well-educated witness, who visited the Wetteren Hospital f 13, 
shortly after this date, saw the dead bodies of a number of 
civilians belonging to Alost, and other civilians wounded. One 
of these stated that he took refuge in the house of his sister-in- 
law ; that the Germans dragged the people out of the house 
which was on fire, seized him, threw him on the ground, and hit 
him on the head with the butt end of a rifle, and ran him 
through the thigh with a bayonet. They then placed him with 
17 or 18 others in front of the German troops, threatening them 
with revolvers. They said that they were going to make the 
people of Alost pay for the losses sustained by the Germans. 
At this hospital was an old woman of 80 completely transfixed 
by a bayonet. 

Other crimes on non-combatants at Alost belong to the end 
of the month of September. Many witnesses speak to the f 15 to f 2: 
murder of harmless civilians. 

In Binuenstraat the Germans broke open the windows of 
the houses and threw fluid inside, and the houses burst into 
flames. Some of the inhabitants were burnt to death. 

The civilians were utilised on Saturday, the 26th September, f. 15. 
as a screen. During their retreat the Germans fired 12 houses in 



38 



£26. 



£27. 



Diaries of 
German 
Soldiers. 

Appendix B. 



Rue des Trois Clefs, an4 three civilians, whose names are given, 
were shot dead in. that street after the firing of the houses. On 
the following day a heap of nine dead civilians were lying in 
the Rue de I'Argent, 

Similar outrages occurred at Erpe, a village a few miles 
from Alost, about the same date. The village was deliberately 
burnt. The houses were plundered and some civilians were 
murdered. 

Civilians were apparently used as a screen at Erpe, but 
they were prisoners taken from Alost and not dwellers in that 
village. 

This disregard for the lives of civilians is strikingly shown 
in extracts from German soldiers' diaries, of which the following 
are representative examples. 

Barthel, who was a sergeant and standard bearer of the 
2nd Company of the 1st Guards Regiment on Foot, and who 
during the campaign received the Iron Cross, says, under 
date 10th August, 1914 : " A transport of 300 Belgians came 
" through Duisburg in the morning. Of these, 80 including 
" the Oberburgomaster were shot according to martial law." 

Matbern, of the 4th Company of Jagers, No. 11, from 
Marburg, states that at a village between Birnal and Dinant 
on Sunday, August 23rd, the Pioneers and Infantry Regiment 178 
were fired upon by the inhabitants. He gives no particulars 
beyond this. He continues : " About 220 inhabitants were 
" shot, and the village was burnt. Artillery is continuously 
" shooting — the village lies in a large ravine. Just now, 
" 6 o'clock in the afternoon, the crossing of the Meuse begins 
" near Dinant. All villages, chateaux and houses are burnt 
" down during the night. It is a beautiful sight to see the 
*' fires all round us in the distance." 

Bombardier Wetzel, of the 2nd Mounted Battery, 1st Kur- 
hessian Field Artillery Regiment, No. 11, records an incident 
which happened in French territory near Lille on the 11th 
October : " We had no fight, but we caught about 20 men 
and shot them." By this time killing not in a fight would 
seem to have passed into a habit. 

Diary No. 32 gives an accurate picture of what took place 
in Lou vain : " What a sad scene — all the houses surrounding 
" the railway station completely destroyed — only some foun- 
" dation walls still standing. On the station square captured 
" guns. At the end of a main street there is the Council Hall 
" which has been completely preserved with all its beautiful 
" turrets ; a sharp contrast : 180 inhabitants are stated to have 
" been shot after they had dug their own graves." 

The last and most important entry is that contained in 
Diary No. 19. This is a blue book interleaved with blotting 
paper, and contains no name and address ; there is, however, 
one circumstance which makes it possible to speak with cer- 
tainty as to the regiment of the writer. He gives the names 



39 

of First Lieutenant von Oppen, Count Eulenburg, Captain von 
Roeder, First Lieutenant von Bock und Polach, Second Lieu- 
tenant Count Hardenberg, and Lieutenant Engelbrecht, A 
perusal of the Prussian Army List of June 1914, sliows that 
all these officers, with the exception of Lieutenant Engelbrecht, 
belonged to the First Regiment of Foot Guards. On the 
24th August 1914, the writer was in Ermeton. The exact 
translation of the extract, grim in its brevity, is as follows : 
" 24.8.14. We took about 1,000 prisoners : at least 500 were 
" shot. The village was burnt because inhabitants had also 
" shot. Two civilians were shot at once." 

We may now sum up and endeavour to explain the character 
and significance of the wrongful acts done by the German army 
in Belgium. 

If a line is drawn on a map from the Belgian frontier to 
Liege and continued to Cliarleroi, and a second line drawn from 
Liege to Malines, a sort of figure resembling an irregular Y will 
be formed. It is along this Y that most of the systematic (as 
opposed to isolated) outrages were committed. If the period 
from August 4th to August 30th is taken it will be found to 
cover most of these organised outrages. Termonde and Alost 
extend, it is true, beyond the Y lines, and they belong to the 
month of September. Murder, rape, arson, and pillage began 
from the moment when the German army crossed the frontier. 
For the first fortnight of the war the towns and villages near 
Li^ge were the chief sufferers. From the 19th of August to 
the end of the month, outrages spread in the directions of 
Charleroi and Malines and reach their period of greatest 
intensity. There is a certain significance in the fact that the 
outrages round Liege coincide with the unexpected resistance 
of the Belgian army in that district, and that the slaughter 
which reigned from the 10th August to the end of the month 
is contemporaneous with the period when the German army's 
need for a quick passage through Belgium at all costs was 
deemed imperative. 

Here let a distinction be drawn between two classes of 
outrages. 

Individual acts of brutality — ill-treatment of civilians, rape, 
plunder, and the like — were very widely committed. These are 
more numerous and more shocking than would be expected in 
warfare between civilised Powers, but they differ rather in 
extent than in kind from what has happened in previous though 
not recent wars. 

In all wars many shocking and outrageous acts must be 
expected, for in every large army there must be a proportion of 
men of criminal instincts whose worst passions are unloosed by 
the immunity which the conditions of warfare afford. Drunken- 
ness, moreover, may turn even a soldier who has no criminal 
habits into a brute, who may commit outrages at which he would 
himself be shocked in his sober moments, and there is evidence 



40 

that Mtoxication was extremely prevalent among the German 
army, b6th in Belgium and in France, for plenty of wine was to be 
found in the villages and country houses which were pillaged. 
Manj^ of the worst outrages appear to have been perpetrated by 
men under the influence of drink. Unfortunately little seems 
to have been done to repress this source of danger. 

In the present war, however — and this is the gravest charge 
against the German army — the evidence shows that the killing 
of non-combatants was carried out to an extent for which no 
previous war between nations claiming to be civilised (for such 
cases as the atrocities perpetrated by the Turks on the Bulgarian 
Christians in 1876, and on the Armenian Christians in 1895 and 
1896, do not belong to that category) furnishes any precedent. 
That this killing was done as part of a deliberate plan is 
clear from the facts hereinbefore set forth regarding Louvain, 
Aerschot, Dinant, and other towns. The killing was done under 
orders in each place. It began at a certain fixed date, and 
stopped (with some few exceptions) at another fixed date. Some 
of the officers who carried out the work did it reluctantly, and 
said they were obeying directions from their chiefs. The same 
Temai'ks apply to the destruction of property. House burning 
was part of the programme ; and villages, even large parts of a 
city, were given to the flames as part of the terrorising policy. 

Citizens of neutral states who visited Belgium in December 
and January report that the German authorities do not deny 
that non-combatants were systematically killed in large numbers 
during the first weeks of the invasion, and this, so far as we 
know, has never been officially denied. If it were denied, the 
flight and continued voluntary exile of thousands of Belgian 
refugees would go far to contradict a denial, for there is no 
historical parallel in modern times for the flight of a large, part 
of a nation before an invader. 

The German Government bave, however, sought to justify 
their severities on the grounds of military necessity, and have 
excused them as retaliation for cases in which civilians fired on 
German troops. There may have been cases in which such 
firing occurred, but no proof has ever been given, or, to our 
knowledge, attempted to be given, of such cases, nor of the 
stories of shocking outrages perpetrated by Belgian men and 
women on German soldiers. 

The inherent improbability of the German contention is 
shown by the fact that after the first few days of the invasion 
every possible precaution had been taken by the Belgian autho- 
rities, by way of placards and hand-bills, to warn the civilian 
population not to intervene in hostilities. Throughout Belgium 
steps had been taken to secure the handing over of all firearms 
in the possession of civilians before the German army arrived. 
These steps were sometimes taken by the police and sometimes 
by the military authorities. 



41 

The invaders appear to have proceeded upon the theory that 
any chance shot coming from an unexpected place was fired by 
civilians. One favourite form of this allegation was that priests 
had fired from the church tower. In many instances the 
soldiers of the allied armies used church towers and private 
houses as cover for their operations. At Aerschot, where the 
Belgian soldiers were stationed in the church tower and fired '■ 
upon the Germans as they advanced, it was at once alleged by 
the Germans when they entered the town, and with difficulty 
disproved, that the firing had come from civilians. Thus one 
elementary error creeps at once into the German argument, for 
they _ were likely to confound, and did in some instances 
certainly confound, legitimate military operations with the 
hostile intervention of civilians. 

Troops belonging to the same army often fire by mistake 
upon each other. That the German army was no exception to 
this rule is proved not only by many Belgian witnesses but by 
the most irrefragable kind of evidence, the admission of 
German soldiers themselves recorded in their war diaries. 
Thus Otto Clepp, 2nd Company of the Reserve, says, under 
date 22nd of August : "3 a.m. Two infantry regiments shot 
" at each other — 9 dead and 50 wounded — fault not yet ascer- 
" tained." In this connection the diaries of Kurt Hoffmann, 
and a soldier of the 112th Regiment (diary No. 14) will repay 
study. In such cases the obvious interest of the soldier is to 
conceal his mistake, and a convenient method of doing so is to 
raise the cry of " francs-tireurs." 

Doubtless the German soldiers often believed that the civilian 
population, naturally hostile, had in fact attacked them. This 
attitude of mind may have been fostered by the German autho- 
rities themselves before the troops passed the frontier, and 
thereafter stories of alleged atrocities committed by Belgians, 
upon Germans such as the myth referred to in one of tlie 
diaries relating to Liege, were circulated amongst the troops 
and roused their anger. 

The diary of Barthel when still in Germany on the 10th 
of August shows that he believed that the Oberburgomaster of 
Liege had murdered a surgeon general. The fact is that no 
violence was inflicted on the inhabitants at Liege until the 19th, 
and no one who studies these pages can have any doubt that 
Liege would immediately have been given over to murder and 
destruction if any such incident had occurred. 

Letters written to their homes which have been found on 
the bodies of dead Germans, bear witness, in a way that now 
sounds pathetic, to the kindness with which they were received 
by the civil population. Their evident surprise at this reception 
was due to the stories which had been dinned into their ears 
of soldiers with their eyes gouged out, treacherous murders, 
and poisoned food, stories which may have been encouraged 



42 

by tlie higher military authorities in order to impress the mind 
of the troops as well as for the sake of justifying the measures 
which they took to terrify the civil population. If there is 
any truth in such stories, no attempt has been made to establish 
it. For instance, the Chancellor of the German Empire, in a 
communication made to the press on September 2 and printed 
in the " Nord Deutsche x\.llgemeine Zeitung," of September 21, 
said as follows : " Belgian girls gouged out the eyes of the 
" German wounded. Officials of Belgian cities have invited 
" our officers to dinner and shot and killed them across the 
" table. Contrary to all international law, the whole civilian 
" population of Belgium was called out, and after having at 
" first shown friendliness, carried on in the rear of our troops 
" terrible warfare with concealed weapons. Belgian women 
" cut the throats of soldiers whom they had quartered in their 
" homes while they were sleeping." 

No evidence whatever seems to have been adduced to prove 
these tales, and though there may be cases in which individual 
Belgians fired on the Germans, the statement that " the whole 
*' civilian population of Belgium was called out " is utterly 
opposed to the fact. 

An invading army may be entitled to shoot at sight a 
civilian caught redhanded, or anyone who though not caiight 
red-handed is proved guilty on enquiry. But this was not the 
practice followed by the German troops. They do not seem to 
have made any enquiry. They seized the civilians of the 
village indiscriminately and killed them, or such as they 
selected from among them, without the least regard to guilt 
or innocence. The mere cry " Civilisten haben geschossen " 
was enough to hand over a whole village or district and even 
outlying places to rutliless slaughter. 

We gladly record the instances where the evidence shows 
that humanity had not wholly disappeared from some members 
of the German army, and that they realised that the responsible 
heads of that organisation were employing them, not in war 
g but in butchery: "I am merely executing orders, and I should 

be shot if I did not execute them," said an officer to a witness 
k. 10. at Louvain. At Brussels another officer says: "I have not 
" done one hundredth part of what we have been ordered to 
" do by the High German military authorities." 

As we have already observed, it would be unjust to 
charge upon the German army generally acts of cruelty which, 
whether due to drunkenness or not, were done by men of brutal 
instincts and unbridled passions. Such crimes were sometunes 
punished by the officers. They were in some cases offset by 
acts of humanity and kindliness. But when an army is 
directed or permitted to kill non-combatants on a large scale, 
tlie ferocity of the worst natu:ves springs into fuller life, and 
both lust and the thirst of blood become more widespread 
and more formidable. Had less licence been allowed to the 



43 

soldiers, and had they not been set to work to slaughter 
civilians, there Avould have been fewer of those painful cases 
in whicli a depraved and morbid cruelty appears, - 

Two classes of murders in particular require special mention, 
because one of them is almost new, and the other altogether 
unprecedented. The former is the seizure of peaceful citizens 
as so-called hostages to be kept as a pledge for the conduct of 
the civil population, or as a means to secure some military 
advantage, or to compel the payment of a contribution, the 
hostages being shot if the condition imposed by the arbitrary 
will of the invader is not fulfilled. Such hostage taking, with 
the penalty of death attached, has now and then happened, the 
most notable case being the shooting of the Archbishop of 
Paris and some of his clergy by the Communards of Paris in 
1871, but it is opposed both to the rules of war and to every 
principle of justice and humanity. The latter kind of murder 
is the killing of the innocent inhabitants of a village because 
shots have been fired, or are alleged to have been fired, on the 
troops by someone in the village. For this practice no previous 
example and no justification have been or can be pleaded. 
Soldiers suppressing an insurrection may have sometimes 
slain civilians mingled Avith insurgents, and Napoleon's forces 
in Spain are said to have now and then killed promiscuously 
whfen trying to clear guerillas out of a village. But in Belgium 
large bodies of men, sometimes including, the burgomaster and 
the priest, were seized, marched by officers to a spot chosen 
for the purpose, and there shot in cold blood, without any 
attempt at trial or even inquir}^, under the pretence of inflicting 
punishment upon the village, though these unhappy victims 
were not CA-en charged with having themselves committed any 
wrongful act, and though, in some cases at least, the viUage 
authorities had done all in their power to prevent any molesta- 
tion of the invading force, , Such acts are no part of war, for 
innocence is entitled to respect even in war. They are mere 
murders, just as the drowning of the innocent passengers and 
crews on a merchant ship is murder and not an act of war. 

That these acts should have been perpetrated on the peaceful 
population of an unoffending country which was not at war with 
its invaders but merely defending its own neutrality, guaranteed 
by the invading Power, may excite amazement and even 
incredulity. It Avas with amazement and almost with incredulity 
that the Committee first read the depositions relating to such 
acts. But when the evidence regarding Liege was followed by 
that regarding Aerschot, Louvain, Andenne, Dinant, and the 
other towns and villages, the cumulative effect of such a mass of 
concurrent testimony became irresistible, and we were driven to 
the conclusion that the things described had really happened. 
The question then arose hoAv they could have happened. Not 
from mere military licence, for the discipline of the German 



44 

army is proverbially stringent, and its obedience implicit. Not 
from any special ferocity of the troops, for whoever has travelled 
among the German peasantry knows that they are as kindly 
and good-natured as any people in Europe, and those who can 
recall the war of 1870 will remember that no charges resembling 
those proved by these depositions were then established. The 
excesses recently committed in Belgium were, moreover, too 
widespread and too uniform in their character to be mere 
sporadic outbursts of passion or rapacity. 

The explanation seems to be that these excesses were 
committed — in some cases ordered, in others allowed — on a 
system and in pursuance of a set purpose. That purpose was 
to strike terror into the civil population and dishearten the 
Belgian troops, so as to crush down resistance and extinguish 
the very spirit of self-defence. The pretext that civilians had 
fired upon the invading troops was used to justify not merely 
the shooting of individual francs-tireurs, but the murder of large 
numbers of innocent civilians, an act absolutely forbidden by 
the rules of civilised warfare.* 

In the minds of Prussian officers War seems to- have become 
a sort of sacred mission, one of the highest functions of the 
omnipotent State, which is itself as much an Army as a State. 
Ordinary morality and the ordinary sentiment of pity vanish in 
its presence, superseded by a new standard which justifies to 
the soldier every means that can conduce to success, however 
shocking to a natural sense of justice and humanity, however 
revolting to his own feelings. The Spirit of War is deified. 
Obedience to the State and its War Lord leaves no room for 
any other duty or feeling. Cruelty becomes legitimate when 
it promises victory. Proclaimed by the heads of the army, 
this doctrine would seem to have permeated the officers and 
affected even the private soldiers, leading them to justify the 
killing of non-combatants as an act of war, and so accustoming 
them to slaughter that even women and children become at last 
the victims. It cannot be supposed to be a national doctrine^ 
for it neither springs from nor reflects the mind and feelings 
of the German people as they have heretofore been known to other 
nations. It is a specifically military doctrine, the outcome of a 
theory held by a ruling caste who have brooded and thought, 
written and talked and dreamed about War until they have 
fallen under its obsession and been hypnotised by its spirit. 

The doctrine is plainly set forth in the German Official 
Monograph on the usages of War on land, issued under the 
direction of the German staff. This book is pervaded through- 
out by the view that whatever military needs suggest becomes 

* As to this, see, in Appendix, the Rules of the Hague Convention of 1907, 
to which Germany was a signatory. 



45 

thereby lawful,. and upon this principle, as the. diaries show, the 
German officers acted.* [ 

If this explanation be the true one, the mystery is solved, 
and that which seemed scarcely credible becomes more intelli- 
gible though not less pernicious. This is not the only case that 
history records in which a false theory, disguising itself as 
loyalty to a State or to a Church, has perverted the conception 
of Duty, and become a source of danger to the world. 



PART II. 

Having thus narrated the offences committed in Belgium, 
which it has been proper to consider as a whole, we now turn to 
another branch of the subject, the breaches of the usages 
of war which appear in the conduct of the German army 
generally. 

This branch has been considered under the following 
heads : — 

First. The treatment of non-combatants, Avhether in 
Belgium or in France, including — 

(a) the killing of non-combatants in France ; 
(6) the treatment of women, and children ; 
(c) the using of innocent non-combatants as a screen 
or shield in the conduct of military operations ; 
, (d) looting, burning, and the wanton destruction of 
property. 
Secondly. Offences, committed in the course of ordinary 
military operations, which violate the usages of war and 
the provisions of the Hague Convention. 
This division includes — 

(a) killing the wounded or prisoners ; 

(b) firing on hospitals or on the Red Cross ambulances 

and stretcher bearers ; 

(c) abuse of the Red Cross or of the White Flag. 



TREATMENT OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION. 

(a) Killing of Non-Combatants. 

The killing of civilians in Belgium has been already 
described sufficiently. Outrages on the civilian population of 
the invaded districts, the burning of villages, the shooting of 
innocent inhabitants and the taking of hostages, pillage and 
destruction continued as the German armies passed into France. 

* Kriegsbrauch im LandTcriege, Berlin, 1902, in VoL YI., in the series . 
entitled KriegsgeschichtUche Einzelschriften, published in 1905. A trans- 
lation of this monograph, by Professor J. H, Morgan, has recently been 
published. 



46 

The diary of the Saxon officer above referred to describes acts 
of this kind committed by the German soldiers in advancing to 
the Aisne at the end of August and after they liad passed 
the French frontier, as well as when they were in Belgian 
territory. 

A proclamation (a specimen of which was produced to the 
Committee) issued at Reims, and placarded over the town, 
affords a clear illustration of the methods adopted by tlie 
German Higher Command. The population of Reims is 
Avarned that on the slightest disturbance part or the whole of 
the city will be burnt to the ground and all the hostages taken 
from the city (a long list of whom is given in the proclamation) 
immediately shot. 

The evidence, however, submitted to the Committee with 
regard to the conduct of the German army in France is not 
nearly so full as that with regard to Belgium. There is no 
body of civilian refugees in England, and the French witnesses 
have generally laid their evidence before their own Government. 
The evidence forwarded to us consists principally of the state- 
ments of British officers and soldiers who took part in the 
retreat after the battle of Mons and in the subsequent advance, 
following the Germans from the Marne. The area coA-ered is 
relatively small, and it is from French reports that any complete 
account of what occurred in the invaded districts in France as a 
whole must be obtained. 

Naturally soldiers in a foreign country, with which they were 
unacquainted, cannot be expected always to give accurately the 
names of villages through which they passed on their marches, 
but this does not prevent their evidence from being definite as 
to what they actually saw in the farms and houses where the 
German troops had recently been. Many shocking outrages are 
recorded. Three examples here may suffice, others are given in 
the Appendix. A sergeant who had been through the retreat 
from Mons, and then taken part in the advance from the Marne, 
and who had been engaged in driving out some German troops 
from a village, states that his troop halted outside a bakery just 
inside the village. It was a private house where baking was 
done, " not like our bakeries here." Two or three women were 
standing at the door. The women motioned them to come into 
the house, as did also three civilian Frenchmen who were there. 
They took them into a garden at the back of the house. At the 
end of the garden was the bakery. They saw two old men — 
between 60 and 70 years of age — and one old woman lying close 
to each other in the garden. All three had the scalps cut right 
through and the brains were hanging out. They were still 
bleeding. Apparently they had only just been killed. The 
three French civilians belonged to this same house. One of 
them spoke a few words of English, He gave them to under- 
stand that these three had been killed by the Germans because 
they had refused to bake bread for them. 



47 

Another witness states that two German soldiers took hold of 1- 10. 
a young civilian named D. and bound his hands behind his back, 
and struck him in the face with their fists. They then tied his 
hands in front and fastened the cord to the tail of the horse. 
The horse dragged him for about 50 yards and then the Germans 
loosened his hands and left him. The whole of his face was cut 
and torn and his arms and legs were bruised. On the following 
day one of his sisters, whose husband was a soldier, came to 
their house with her four children. His brother, who was also ' 

married and who lived in a village near Valenciennes, went to 
fetch the bread for his sister. On the way back to their house 
he met a patrol of Uhlans, who took him to the market 
place at Valenciennes and then shot him. About 12 other 
civilians were also shot in the market place. The Uhlans then 
burned 19 houses in the village, and afterwards burned the ,. 
corpses of the civilians, including that of his brother. His ' 
father and his uncle afterwards went to see the dead body of his 
brother, but the German soldiers refused to allow them to pass. 

A lance-corporal ii; the Rifles, who was on patrol duty with I 
five privates during the retirement of the Germans after the 
Marne, states that they enteresd a house in a small village and 
took ten Uhlans prisoners and then searched the house and 
found two women and two children. One was dead, but the 
body not yet cold. The left arm had been cut off just below ^- ^• 
the elbow. The floor was covered with blood. The woman's 
clothing was disarranged. The other woman was alive but un- 
conscious. Her right leg had been cut off above the knee. 
There were two little children, a boy about 4 or 5 and a girl of 
about 6 or 7. The boy's left hand was cut off at the wrist and 
the girl's right hand at the same place. They were both quite 
, dead. The same witness, states that he saw several women and 
children lying 4ead in various other places, but says he could 
not say whether this might not have been accidentally caused 
in legitimate fighting. 

The evidence before us proves that, in the parts of France 
referred to, piurder of unoffending civilians and other acts of 
cruelty, including aggravated cases of rape, carried out under 
threat of death, and sometimes actually followed by murder of 
the victim, were committed by some of the German troops. 

(6) The Treatment of Women and Children. 

The evidence shows that the German authorities, when 
carrying out a policy of systematic arson and plunder in 
selected districts, usually drew some distinction between the 
adult male population on the one hand and the women and 
children on the other. It was a frequent practice to set apart 
the adult males of the condemned district with a view to the : , 
execution of a suitable number — preferably of the younger 
and more vigorous — and to reserve the women and children 

O 28300 D 



e4. 


e27. 


cl2. 


e8. 


e 13, e 17. 


a 27. 


c7. 


dl. 


b 18, b 2. 



48 

for milder treatment. The depositions, however, present many- 
instances of calculated cruelty, often going the length of 
murder, towards the women and children of the condemned 

c 36. area. We have already referred to the case of Aerschot, 
where the women and children were herded in a church 
Avhich had recently been used as a stable, detained for 48 
hours with no food other than coarse bread, and denied the 

b 26, common decencies of life. At Diiiant 60 women and children 
were confined in the cellar of a convent from Sunday morning 
till the following Friday (August 28th), sleeping on the ground, 
for there were no beds, with nothing to drink during the whole 
period, and given no food until the Wednesday, " when some- 
" body threw into the cellar two sticks of macaroni and a carrot 
" for each prisoner." In other cases the women and children 
were marched for long distances along roads [e.g., march of 
women from Louvain to Tirlemont, 28th August), the laggards 
pricked on by the attendant Uhlans. A lady complains of 
having been brutally kicked by privates. Others were struck 
with the butt end of rifles. At Louvain, at Liege, at Aerschot, 
at Malines, at Montigny, at Andenne, and elsewhere, there is 
evidence that the troops were not restrained from drunkenness, 
and drunken soldiers cannot be trusted to observe the rules 
or decencies of war, least of all when they are called upon to 
execute a pre-ordained plan of arson and pillage. From the 

a 28. very first women were not safe. At Liege women and children 
were chased about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a 

a 31. story, very circumstantial in its details, of how women were 

c 38. publicly raped in the market-place of the city, five young 
, 1 " £> German officers assisting. At Aerschot men and women were 

d 71 "' deliberately shot when coming out of burning houses. At 
Liege, Louvain, Sempst, and Malines women were burned to 
death, either because they were surprised and stupefied by the 
fumes of the conflagration, or because they were prevented from 

c IS- escaping by German soldiers. Witnesses recount how a great 

c 45. crowd of men, women, and children from Aerschot Avere marched 
to Louvain, and then suddenly exposed to a fire from a mitrail- 
leuse and rifles. " We were all placed," recounts a sufferer, 
" in Station Street, Louvain, and the German soldiers fired on 
" uS. I saw the corpses of some women in the street. 1 fell 
" down, and a woman who had been shot fell on top of me." 
Women and children suddenly turned out into the streets, and 
compelled to witness the destruction by fire of their homes, 
provided a sad spectacle to such as were sober enough to see, 

® ^' A humane German officer, witnessing the ruin of Aerschot, 

exclaims in disgust : " I am a father myself, and I cannot bear 
this. It is not war, but butchery." Officers, as well as men, 
succumbed to the temptation of drink, with results which may be 

c 46. illustrated by an incident which occurred at Campenhout. In 
this village there was a certain well-to-do merchant (name given), 
who had a good cellar of champagne. On the afternoon of the 



49 

14th or 15th August, three German cavalry officers entered the 
house and demanded champagne. Having drunk ten bottles, 
and invited five or six officers and three or four private soldiers 
to join them, they continued their carouse, and then called fof 
the master and mistress of the house : " Immediately my mistress 
came in," says the valet de chambre, " one of the officers who 
" was sitting on the floor got up, and, putting a revolver to my 
" mistress' temple, shot her dead. The officer was obviously 
" drunk. The other officers continued to drink and sing, and 
" they did not pay great attention to the killing of my mistress. 
" The officer who shot my mistress then told my master to dig 
" a grave and bury my mistress. My master and the officer 
" went into the garden, the officer threatening my master with 
" a pistol. My master was then forced to dig the grave, and 
" to bury the body of my mistress in it. I cannot say for what 
" reason they killed my mistress. The officer who did it was 
" singing all the time." 

In the evidence before us there are cases tending to show 
that aggravated crimes against women were sometimes severely 
punished. One witness reports that a young girl who was 
being pursued by a drunken soldier at Louvain appealed to a 
German officer, and'that the offender Avas then and there shot : ^ ^^^ 

another describes how an officer of the 32nd Regiment of the 
Line was led out to execution for the violation of two young a 32, 
girls, but reprieved at the request or with the consent of the 
girls' mother. These instances are sufficient to show that the 
maltreatment of women was no part of the military scheme of 
the invaders, however much it may appear to have been the 
inevitable result of the system of terror deliberately adopted in 
certain regions. Indeed, so much is avowed: "I asked the 
"commander why we had been spared," says a lady in 
Louvain, who dej^oses to having suffered much brutal treatment 
during the sack. He said, " We will not hurt you anj^ more. e. 13. 
" Stay in Louvain. All is finished." It was Saturday, 
August 29th, and the reign of terror was over. 

Apart from the crimes committed in special areas and 
belonging to a scheme i of systematic reprisals for the alleged 
shooting by civilians, there is evidence of offences committed 
against women and children by individual soldiers, or by small 
groups of soldiers, both in the advance through Belgium and 
France as in the retreat from the Marne. Indeed, the discipline 
appears to have been loose during the retreat, and there is 
evidence as to the burning of villages, and the murder and 
violation of their female inhabitants during this episode of the j i 

war. 

In this tale of horrors hideous forms of mutilation occur ^ ^ • 
with some frequency in the depositions, two of which may be ^ 3^ 
connected in some instances with a perverted form of sexual d 1. 

instineti 

D 2 



50 

<2 ^9- A tliird form of mutilation, the cutting of one or both hands, 

I '>■' \" i' ^^ frequently said to have taken place. In some cases where 
' ' this form of mutilation is alleged to have occurred it may be 
the consequence of a cavalry charge up a village street, hacking 
and slashing at everything in the way ; in others the victim 
may possibly have held a weapon, in others the motive may 
have been the theft of rings. 

(1 00, d 37. We find many well-established cases of the slaughter (often 

(I 99.^ accompanied by mutilation) of whole families, including not 
, r, H infrequently that of quite small children. In two cases it seems 
to be clear that preparations were made to burn a family 
alive. These crimes were committed over a period of many 
weeks and simultaneously in many places, and the authorities 
must have known or ought to have known that cruelties of this 
character were being perpetrated, nor can anyone doubt that 
they could have been stopped by swift and decisive action on 
the part of the heads of the German army. 

The use of women and even children as a screen for the 

protection of the German troops is referred to in a later part of 

this Report. From the number of troops concerned, it must 

have been commanded or acquiesced in by officers, and in some 

cases the presence and connivance of officers is proved. 

a 9, a 21, The cases of violation, sometimes under threat of death, 

.^^^'oo^^;, are numerous and clearly proved. We referred here to com- 

53 56 '57' paratively few out of the many that have been placed in the 

d 22, &c. Appendix, because the circumstances are in most instances 

much the same. They were often accompanied with cruelty, 

and the slaughter of women after violation is more than once 

credibly attested. 

It is quite possible that in some cases where the body of a 

Belgian or a French woman is reported as lying in the roadside 

. , pierced with bayonet wounds or hanging naked from a tree, or 

else as lying gashed and mutilated in a cottage kitchen or 

bedroom, the woman in question gave some provocation. She 

may by act or word have irritated her assailant, and in certain 

instances evidence has been supplied both as to the provocation 

offered and as to the retribution inflicted : — 

a 4. (1) " Just before we got to Melen," says a witness, who had 

fallen into the hands of the Germans on August 5th, 

" I saw a woman with a child in her arms standing 

" on the side of the road on our left-hand side 

" watching the soldiers go by. Her name was 

** G . . . , aged about sixty-three, and a neigh- 

" hour of mine. The officer asked the woman for 

" some water in good French. She went inside her 

; ;. " son's cottage to get some and brought it imme- 

."■ r] ' " diately he had stopped. The officer went into the 

■ ■ ■ ' " cottage garden and drank the water. The woman 

• ' " thensaid, when she saw the prisoners, ' Instead of 

" giving you water you deserve to be shot,' The 



51 

" officer shouted to us, ' March.' We went on, and 
" immediately I saw the officer draw his revolver 
" and shoot the woman and child. One shot killed 
" both." 

(2) Two old men and one old woman refused to bake bread I 4. 

for the Germans. They are butchered. {See above 
p. 46.) 

(3) 23rd August. I went with tAvo friends (names given) d 130. 

to see what we could see. About three hours out of 
Malines we were taken prisoners by a Gennan patrol 
— an officer and six men — and marched off into a 
little wood of saplings, where there was a house. 
The officer spoke Flemish. He knocked at the door; 
the peasant did not come. The officer ordered the 
soldiers to break down the door, which two of them 
did. The peasant came and asked what they were 
doing. The officer said he did not come quickly 
enough, and that they had " trained up " plenty of 
others. His hands were tied behind his back, and 
he was shot at once without a moment's delay. The 
wife came out with a little sucking child. She put 
the child down and sprang at the Germans like a 
lioness. She clawed their faces. One of the Germans 
took a rifle and struck her a tremendous blow with the 
butt on the head. Another took his bayonet and 
fixed it and thrust it through the child. He then put 
his rifle on his shoulder with the child up it, its little 
arms stretched out once or twice. The officers 
ordered the houses to be set on fire, and straw was 
obtained, and it was done. The man and his wife 
and the child were thrown on the top of the straw. 
There were about 40 other peasant prisoners there 
also, and the officer said : " I am doing this as a 
" lesson and example to you. When a German tells 
" you to do something next time you must move 
" more quickly.'' The regiment of Germans was a 
regiment of Hussars, with cross-bones and a death's 
head on the cap. 
Can anyone think that such acts as these, committed by 
women in the circumstances created by the invasion of Belgium, 
were deserving of the extreme form of vengeance attested by 
these and other depositions ? 

In considering the question of provocation it is pertinent to 
take into account the numerous cases in which old women and 
very small children have been shot, bayoneted, and even 
mutilated. Whatever excuse may be offered by the Germans 
for the killing of grown-up women, there can be no possible 
defence for the murder of children, and if it can be shown that 
infants and small children were not infrequently bayoneted 
and shot it is a fair inference that many of the offences against 



52 

women require no explanation more recondite than the unbridled 
violence of brutal or drunken criminals. 

g 21. It is clearly shown that many offences were committed 

against infants and quite young children. On one occasion 
children were even roped together and used as a military screen 
against the enemy, on another three soldiers went into action 
carrying small children to protect themselves from flank fire. 
A shocking case of the murder of a baby by a drunken soldier 
at Malines is thus recorded by one eye-witness and confirmed 
by another :— 

d 4. " One day when the Germans were not actualling bom- 

barding the town I left my house to go to my mother's house 
in High Street. My husband was with me. I saw eight 
German soldiers, and they were drunk. They were singing 
and making a lot of noise and dancing about. As the German 
soldiers came along the street I saw a small child, whether boy 
or girl I could not see, come out of a house. The child was 
about two years of age. The child came into the middle of 
the street so as to be. in the way of the soldiers. The soldiers 
were walking in twos. The first line of two passed the child ; 
one of the second line, the man on the left, stepped aside and 
drove his bayonet with both hands into the child's stomach, 
lifting the child into the air on his bayonet and carrying it 
away on his bayonet, he and his comrades still singing. The 
child screamed when the soldier struck it with his bayonet, 
but not afterwards." 

These, no doubt, were for the most part the acts of drunken 
soldiers, but an incident has been recorded which discloses 
the fact that even sober and highly-placed officers were not 
always disposed to place a high value on child life. Thus the 

f 2. General, wishing to be conducted to the Town Hall at Lebbeke, 
remarked in French to his guide, who was accompanied by a 
small boy : "If you do not show me the right way I will 
" shoot you and your boy." There was no need to carry the 
threat into execution, but that the threat should have been made 
is significant. 

We cannot tell whether these acts of cruelty to children 
were part of the scheme for inducing submission by inspiring 
terror. In Louvain, where the system of terrorising was 
carried to the furthest limit, outrages on children were 
uncommon. The same, however, cannot be said of some of 
the smaller villages which were subjected to the system. In 
Hofstade and Sempst, in Haecht, Rotselaer and Wespelaer, 
many children were murdered. Nor can it be said of the 

b 14. village of Tamines where three small children (whose names 
are given by an eye-witness of the crime) \Yere slaughtered 
on the green for no apparent motive. It is difficult to imagine 
the motives which may have prompted such acts. Whether 
or no Belgian civilians fired on German' soldiers, young 
children at any rate did not fire. The number and' character 



53 

of these murders constitute the most distressing feature con- 
nected with the conduct of the war so far as it is revealed in 
the depositions submitted to the Committee. 

(c) The use of Civilians as Screens. 

We have before us a considerable body of evidence with 
reference to the practice of the Germans of using civilians and 
sometimes military prisoners as screens from behind which they 
could fire upon the Belgian troops in the hope that the Belgians 
would not return the fire for fear of killing or wounding their 
own fellow countrymen. 

In some cases this evidence refers to places where fighting 
was actually going on in the streets of a town or village, and to 
these case6 we attach little importance. It might well happen 
when terrified civilians were rushing about to seek safety, that 
groups of them might be used as a screen by either side of the 
combatants without any intention of inhumanity or of any breach 
of the rules of civilised warfare. But setting aside these doubtful 
cases, there remains evidence which satisfies us that on so many 
occasions as to justify its being described as a practice, the 
German soldiers, under the eyes and by the direction of their 
officers, were guilty of this act. 

Thus, for instance, outside Fort Fleron, near Liege, men and 
children were marched in front of the Germans to prevent the 
Belgian soldiers from firing. 

The progress of the Germans through Mons was marked by 
many incidents of this character. Thus, on the 22nd August, 
half a dozen Belgian colliers returning from work were marching 
in front of some German troops who were pursuing the English, 
and in the opinion of the witnesses they must have been placed 
there intentionally. An English officer describes how he caused 
a barricade to be erected in a main thoroughfare leading out of 
Mons, when the Germans in order to reach a cross road in the 
rear, fetched civilians out of the houses on each side of the main 
road and compelled them to hold up white flags and act as 
cover. 

Another British officer who saw this incident is convinced 
that the Germans were acting deliberately for the purpose of 
protecting themselves from the fire of the British troops. Apart 
from this protection, the Germans could not have advanced, as 
the street was straight and commanded by the British rifle fire 
at a range of 700 or 800 yards. Several British soldiers also 
speak to this incident, and their story is confirmed by a Flemish 
witness in a side street. 

On the 24th August, men, women, and children were actually g H. 
pushed into the front of the German position outside Mons. 
The witness speaks of 16 to 20 women, about a dozen children, 
and half a dozen men being there. 



54 

g 14. Seven oi' eiglit women and five or six very young children 

were- utilised in this way by some Uhlans between Landrecies 
and Guise. - - _ 

g 15. A Belgian soldier saw an incident of this character during 

the retreat from Naniur. 

g 16. At the battle of Malines, 60 or 80 Belgian civilians, amongst 

whom were some women, were driven before the German troops, 
p. 17, Another witness saw a similar incident near Malines, but a much 

larger number of civilians was involved, and a priest was in' 

front with a white flag, 
g 19. In another instance, related by a Belgian soldier, the civilians 

were tied by the wrists in groups. 

g 20. . At Eppeghem, where the Germans were driven back by the 
Bielgian sortie from Antwerp, civilians were used as a cover for 
the German retreat. 

g 21. Near Malines, early in September, about 10 children, roped 

together, were driven in front of a German force. 

g 22. At Londerzeel 30 or 40 civilians, men, women and children,' 

were placed at the head of a German column. 

f 9. One witness from Termonde was made to stand in front of 

the Germans, together with others, all with their hands above 
their heads. Those who allowed their hands to drop were at 

g 24. once prodded with the bayonet. Again at Termonde, about 
September the 10th, a number of civilians were shot bj^ the 
Belgian soldiers who were compelled to fire at the Germans, 
taking the risk of killing their own countrymen. 

g 23. At Tournai, 400 Belgian civilians, mein, women and 

children, were placed in front of the Germans who theii 
engaged the French, 
g 26, g 27, The operations outside Antwerp were not free from incidents 

g 31. of this character. Near Willebroeck some civilians, including 
a number of children, a woman aiid one old man, were driven in 
front of the German troops. German officers were present, and 
one woman who refused to advance was stabbed twice with the 
bayonet, and a little child who ran up to her as she fell had half 
its head bloAvn away by a shot from a rifle. • >; 

g 29. Other incidents of the same kind are reported from Nazaretli 

g 35. and Ypres. The British troops were compelled to fire, in some 
cases at the risk of killing civilians. 

g 36. At Ypres the Germans drove women in front of them by 

pricking them with bayonets. The wounds were , afterwards 
seen by the witness. ■ ; ; ; , 

(d) Looting, Burning, and Destruction of Property. . . 

a 16, a 28, There is an overwhelmifig mass of evidence of the deliberate 

c 14, d 34. destruction of private property by the German soldiers. The 

destruction in most cases was effected by fire, and the German 

troops, as will be seen from earlier passages in the Report, bad 



f 3. 
b26. 



55 

been provided beforehand with appliances for rapidly setting 
lire to houses. Among the appliances enumerated by witnesses 
are syringes for squirting petrol, guns for tlirowing small 
inflammable bombs, and small pellets made of inflammable 
material. Specimens of the last-mentioned have been shown to 
members of the Committee. Besides burning houses the 
Germans frequently smashed furniture and pictures ; they also 
broke in doors and windows. Frequently, too, they defiled i'^' 
houses by relieving the wants of nature upon the floor. They c 30 to c or 
also appear to have perpetrated the same vileness upon piled d 103, 131 
up heaps of provisions so as to destroy what they could not &c- 

themselves consume. They also on numerous occasions threw 
corpses into wells, or left in them the bodies of persons 
murdered by drowning. 

Iri-addition to these acts of destruction, the German troops e 
both in Belgium and France are praved to have been guilty of 
persistent looting. In the majority of cases the looting tooic ^2" 
place from houses, but there is also evidence that German 
soldiers and even officers robbed their prisoners, both civil and 
military, of sums of money and other portable possessions. It 
was apparently well known throughout the German army that 
towns and villages would be burned whenever it appeared that 
any civilians had fired upon the German troops, and there 
is reason to suspect that this known intention of the German 
military authorities in some cases explains the sequence of 
events which led up to the burning and sacking of a town or 
village. The soldiers, knowing that they would have an oppor^ 
tunitj^ of plunder if the place was condemned, had a motive for 
arranging some incident which would , provide the necessary 
excuse for condemnation. More than one witness alleges that 
shots coming from the window of a house were fired by German 
soldiers who had forced their way into the house for the purpose 
of thus creating an alarm. It is also alleged that German 
soldiers on some occasions merely fired their rifles in the air in 
a side street and then reported to their officers that they had 
been fired at. On the report that firing had taken place orders 
were given for wholesale destruction, and houses were destroyed 
in streets and districts Avhere there was no allegation that firing 
had taken place, as well as in those where the charge arose. 
That the destruction could have been limited is proved by the 
care taken to preserve particular houses whose occupants had 
made themselves in one way or another agreeable to the 
conquerors. These houses were marked in chalk ordering 
them to be spared, and spared they were. 

The above statements have reference to the burning of towns 
and villages. In addition, the German troops in numerous 
instances have set fire to farmhouses and farm buildings. Here, 
however, the plea of military necessity can more safely be 
alleged. A farmhouse may afford convenient shelter to an 
enemy, and where such use is probable, it may be urged that 



56 

the destruction of the buildings is justifiable. It is clearlj^, 
however, the duty of the soldiers who destroy the buildings to 
give reasonable warning to the occupants so that they may 
escape. Doubtless this was in many cases done by the German: 
commanders, but there is testimony that in some cases the 
burning of the farmhouse was accompanied by the murder 
of the inhabitants. 

The same fact stands out clearly in the more extensive 
burning of houses in towns and villages. In some cases, indeed, 
as a prelude to the burning, inhabitants were cleared out of their 
houses and driven along the streets, often with much accom- 
panying brutality — some to a place of execution, others to 
prolonged detention in a church or other jpublic buildings. In 
other cases witnesses assert that they saw German soldiers 
forcing back into the flames men, women, and childreji, who 
were trj'^ing to escape from the burning houses. There is also 
evidence that soldiers deliberately shot down civilians as they 
fled from the fire, 

The general conclusion is that the burning and destruction 
of property which took place was only in a very small minority 
of cases justified by military necessity, and that even then the 
destruction was seldom accompanied by that care for the live^ 
of non-combatants which has hitherto been expected from a 
military commander belonging to a civilised nation. On the 
contrary, it is plain that in many cases German officers and 
soldiers deliberately added to the sufferings of the unfortunate 
people whose property they were destroying. 



OFFENCES AGAINST COMBATANTS. 

(a) The Killing of the Wounded and of Prisoners. - 

In dealing with the treatment of the wounded and of 
prisoners and the cases in which the former appear to have 
been killed when helpless, and the latter at, or after, the 
moment of capture, we are met hj some peculiar difficulties, 
because such acts may not in all cases be deliberate and cold- 
blooded violations of the usages of war. Soldiers who are 
advancing over a spot where the wounded have fallen may 
conceivably think that some of those lying prostrate are sham- 
ming dead, or, at any rate, are so slightly wounded as to be 
able to attack, or to fire from behind when the advancing force 
has passed, and thus they may be led into killing those whom 
they would otherwise have spared. There will also be instances 
in which men, intoxicated with the frenzy of battle, slay even 
those whom, on reflection, they might have seen to be incapable 
of further harming them. The same kind of fury may vent 
itself on persons who are already surrendering ; and even a 
soldier who is usually self- controlled or humane, may, in the 
heat of the moment, go on killing, especially in a general melee, 
those who were offering to surrender. This is most likely to 



57 

happen when snch a soldier has been incensed by an act of 
treachery or is stirred to revenge by the death of a comrade to 
■whom he is attached. Some cases of this kind appear in the 
evidence. Such things happen in all wars as isolated instances, 
and the circumstances may be pleaded in extenuation of acts 
otherwise shocking. We have made due allowance for these 
considerations, and have rejected those cases in which there is 
a reasonable doubt as to whether those who killed the wounded ^^'J^Wl^ 
knew that the latter were completely disabled. Nevertheless, j^ 20' h. 3l' 
after making all allowances, there remain certain instances in ^ 32,' ii 34^ 
which it is clear that quarter was refused to persons desiring to h 36. 
surrender when it ought to have been given, or that persons 
already so wounded as to be incapable of fighting further were 
wantonly shot or bayoneted. 

The cases to Avhich references are given all present features 
generally similar, and in several of them men who had been 
left wounded in the trenches when a trench was carried by the 
enemy were found, when their comrades subsequently re-took 
the trench, to have been slaughtered, although evidently help- 
less, or else they would have escaped with the rest of the 
retreating force. For instance, a witness says : " About Sep- h 23. 
tember the 20th our regiment took part in an engagement 
with the Germans. After we had retired into our trenches a 
few minutes after we got back into them the Germans retired 
into their trenches. The distance between the trenches of 
the opposing forces was about 400 yards. I should say about 
50 or 60 of our men had been left lying on the field from our 
trenches. After we got back to them I distinctly saw Ger- 
man soldiers come out of their trencheSj go over the spots 
where our men were lying, and bayonet them. Some of our 
men were lying nearly half way between the trenches." 
Another says : " The Germans advanced over the trenches of ^ 28. 
the headquarters trench where I had been on guard for three 
days. When the Germans reached our wounded I saw their 
officer using his sword to cut them down." Another witness h 29. 
says : " Outside Ypres we were in trenches and were attacked, 
and had to retire until reinforced by other companies of the 
Royal Fusiliers. Then we took the trenches and found the 
wounded, between 20 and 30, lying in the trenches with 
bayonet wounds, and some shot. Most of them, say three 
quarters, had their throats cut." 

In one case, given very circumstantially, a witness tells how a h 18. 
party of wounded British soldiers were left in a chalk pit, all very 
badly hurt, and quite unable to make resistance. One of them, 
an officer, held up his handkerchief as a white flag, and this 
" attracted the attention of a party of about eight Germans. 
" The Germans came to the edge of the pit. It was getting 
" dusk, but the light was still good, and everything clearly 
" discernible. One of them, who appeared to be carrying no 
" arms, and who, at any rate, had no rifle, came a few feet 



" flown tlie slope into the clialk pit, within eight or ten yards 

of some of the wounded men." He looked at the men, 

laughed, and said something in German to the Germans who 

were waiting on the edge of the pit. Immediately one of them 

fired at the officer, then three or four of these ten soldiers were 

shot, then another officer, and the witness, and the rest of them, 

" After an interval of some time I sat up and found that I was 

the onl}^ man of the ten who were living Avhen the Germans 

came into the pit remaining alive, and that all the rest were 

" dead." 

^ ^- Another witness describes a painful case in which five 

soldiers, tAvo Belgians and three French, were tied to trees by 

German soldiers apparently drunk, who stuck knives in their 

faces, pricked them with their bayonets, and ultimately shot 

them. 

We have no evidence to show whether and in what cases 
orders proceeded from the officer in command to give no 
quarter, but there are some instances in which persons obviously 
desiring to surrender were nevertheless killed. 

. .. . (h) Firing on Hospitals or on the Red Cross Amhidances or 

Stretcher-bearers, 

This subject may conveniently be divided into three sub- 
divisions, namely, firing on — 

(1) Hospital buildings and other Red Cross establishments. 

(2) Ambulances. 

(3) Stretcher-bearers. 

Under the first and second categories there is obvious diffi- 
culty in proving intention, especially under the conditions of 
modern long range artillery fire, A commanding officer's 
duty is to give strict orders to respect hospitals, ambulances, 
&c., and also to place Red Cross units as far away as possible 
from any legitimate line of fire. But with all care some acci- 
dents must happen, and many reported cases will be ambiguous. 
At the same time when military observers have formed a 
distinct opinion that buildings and persons under the recog-. 
nisable protection of the Red Cross were wilfully fired upon, 
such opinions cannot be disregarded. 

Between 30 and 40 of .the depositions submitted related to 
this offence. This number does not in itself seem so great as 
to be inconsistent with the possibility of accident, 
Ji 1-^ In one case a Red Cross Depot was shelled on most days 

rj. li 4G throughout the week. This is hardly reconcilable with the 
enemy's gunners having taken any care to avoid it. 

h 38, li 44 There are other cases of conspicuous hospitals being shelled, 

^^ VVo ^^ ^^^ ^^^® witnesses' opinion, purposely. 

h :J8 7a) ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ these the witness, a sergeant-major, makes a sug- 

gestion which appears plausible, namely, that the German 
gunners use any conspicuous building as a mark to verify their 
ranges rather than for the purpose of destruction. It Avould be 



■ 59 

quite according to the modern sj^stem of what German writers 
call Kriegsrdson to hold that the convenience of range-finding 
is a sufficient military necessity to justify disregarding any 
immunity conferred on a building by the Red Cross or other- 
Avise. In any case, artillery fire on a hospital at such a 
moderate range as about 1,000 yards can hardl}^ be thought 
accidental. 

(2) As to firing on ambulances, the evidence is more h 45 
explicit. h 51, 

In one case the witness is quite clear that the ambulances ^^f 

T . ^ generally 

were aimed at. ^ Professor 

In another case of firing at an ambulance train the range Morgan's 

AVas quite short. statements. 

In another a Belgian Red Cross party is stated to have been "^PP^"'^^'' -^• 
ambushed. 

On the whole Ave do not find proof of a general or systematic 
firing on hospitals or ambulances ; but it is not possible to 
believe tiiat much care Avas taken to avoid this. 

(3) As to firing on stretcher-bearers in the course of trench h 40, h 41. 
Avarfare, the testimony is abundant, and the facts do not seem 
explicable by accident. It may be that sometimes the bearers ^ ^^• 
Avere suspected of seeing too much ; and it is plain from the 
general military policy of the German armies that A^er}^ slight 
suspicion would be acted on in case of doubt. 

(c) Abuse of the Red Cross and of the White Flag. 

The Red Cross. 

Cases of the Red Cross being abused are much more h 56. 
definite. 

There are several accounts of fire being opened, sometimes li 59, h 60. 
at very short range, by machine guns which had been disguised 
in a German Red Cross ambulance or car ; this Avas aggravated h 64, h 66, 
in one case near Tirlemont by the German soldiers Avearing 
Belgian uniform. 

Witness speaks also of a stretcher party Avith the Red Cross h 58. 
being used to cover an attack, and of a German Red Cross man 
working a machine gun. 

There is also a Avell-attested case of a Red Cross motor car 
being used to carry ammunition under command of officers. 

Unless all these statements are wilfully false, Avhich the 
Committee sees no reason to believe, these acts must liaA'e been 
deliberate, and it does not seem possible that a Red Cross car 
could be equipped with a machine gun by soldiers acting 
without orders. There is also one case of firing from a cottage 
where the Red Cross flag was flying, and this could not be 
accidental. 

On the Avhole, there is distinct evidence of the Red Cross 
having been deliberately misused for offensiA'e purposes, and 
seemingly under orders, on some, though not many, occasions. 



60 

Abuse of the White Flag. 

Cases of this kind are numerous. It is possible that a small 

group of men may show a White Flag without authority from 

any proper officer, in which case their action is, of course, not 

h 72, h 73. binding on the rest of the platoon or other unit. But this will 

h 67, h 77. not apply to the case of a whole unit advancing as if to 

' surrender, or letting the other side advance to receive the 

pretended surrender, and then opening fire. Under this head 

we find many depositions by British soldiers and several by 

officers. In some cases the firing was from a machine gun 

brought up under cover of the White Flag. 

The depositions taken by Professor Morgan in France 
. strongly corroborate the evidence collected in this country. 
h 70. The case numbered h 70 may be noted as very clearly 

stated. The Germans, who had "put up a white flag on a 
lance and ceased fire," and thereby induced a company to 
advance in order to take them prisoners, " dropped the white 
flag and opened fire at a distance of 100 yards." This was near 
Nesle, on September the 6th, 1914. It seems clearly proved 
that in some divisions at least of the German army this practice 
is very common. The incidents as reported cannot be explained 
by unauthorised surrenders of small groups. 

There is, in our opinion, sufficient evidence that these 
offences have been frequent, deliberate, and in many cases 
committed by whole units under orders. All the acts mentioned 
in this part of the Report are in contravention of the Hague 
Convention, signed by the Great Powers, including France, 
Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, in 1907, as 
may be seen by a reference to Appendix I)., in which the 
provisions of that Convention relating to the conduct of war on 
land are set forth. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

From the foregoing pages it will be seen that the Committee 
have come to a definite conclusion upon each of the heads 
under which the evidence has been classified. 
It is proved — 

(i) That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate 
and systematically organised massacres of the civil 
population, accompanied by many isolated murders 
and other outrages, 
(ii) That in the conduct of the war generally innocent 
civilians, both men and women, were murdered 
in large numbers, women violated, and children 
murdered, 
(iii) That looting, house burning, and the wanton des- 
truction of property were ordered and countenanced 
by the officers of the German Army, that elaborate 
provision had been made for systematic incendi- 
arism at the very outbreak of the war, and that 



61 

the burnings and destruction were frequent wliere 
no military necessity could be alleged, being 
indeed part of a system of general terrorization, 
(iv) That the rules and usages of war were frequently 
broken, particularly by the using of civilians, 
including women and children, as a shield for 
advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree 
by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the 
frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the White 
Flag. 

Sensible as they are of the gravity of these conclusions, the 
Committee conceive that they would be doing less than their 
duty if they failed to record them as fully established by the 
evidence. Murder, lust, and pillage prevailed over many parts 
of Belgium on a scale unparalleled in any war between civilised 
nations during the last three centuries. 

Our function is ended when we have stated what the 
evidence establishes, but we may be permitted to express our 
belief that these disclosures will not have been made in vain 
if they touch and rouse the conscience of mankind, and we 
venture to hope that as soon as the present war is over, the 
nations of the world in council will consider what means can be 
provided and sanctions devised to prevent the recurrence of 
such horrors as our generation is now witnessing. 

We are, &c., 
BRYCE. 
F. POLLOCK. 
EDWARD CLARKE. 
KENELM E. DIGBY. 
ALFRED HOPKINSON. 
H. A. L. FISHER. 
HAROLD COX. 



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